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If God forbade marrying foreigners, why were Joseph and Moses not condemned for their foreign wives?

Hard question · The law of Moses · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate

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The passages

Exodus 34:11–16

Israel must make no covenant with the peoples of Canaan, nor take their daughters for their sons, lest they lead them after their gods.

Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

Deuteronomy 7:1–4

Israel is not to intermarry with the seven nations of Canaan, “For they will turn away thy son from following me”.

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.

Genesis 41:45

Pharaoh gives Joseph Asenath, daughter of the priest of On, as his wife.

And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphnath–paaneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Poti–pherah priest of On. And Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt.

Numbers 12:1–10

Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses because of his Cushite (KJV ‘Ethiopian’) wife; God defends Moses, and Miriam becomes leprous.

And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman. And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it. (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.) And the Lord spake suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out. And the Lord came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam: and they both came forth. And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. …

1 Kings 11:1–4

Solomon loves many foreign women, of nations God had warned about, and in his old age they turn his heart after other gods.

But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; Of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.

The objection

The law warns that marrying foreign women will lead Israel after other gods, and that God will destroy those who do it (Exodus 34:16; Deuteronomy 7:3-4); Solomon fell in just this way. Yet Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest, and Moses married a Cushite woman, and far from condemning Moses, God punished Miriam for criticising him. Is marrying foreigners forbidden or not?

The answer

The law did not forbid marriage with foreigners as such. It forbade marriage with the nations of Canaan, named in the same passages: “the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite” (Exodus 34:11; compare Deuteronomy 7:1). Its reason was religious, not racial: “For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods” (Deuteronomy 7:4). The same law allowed an Israelite to marry a woman taken captive from a distant city (Deuteronomy 20:15; 21:10-14), and outsiders who joined themselves to the Lord were welcomed, as Rahab and Ruth were (Joshua 6:25; Ruth 1:16).

Joseph and Moses do not fall under these laws. Joseph married Asenath in Egypt, centuries before the law was given at Sinai, and she was Egyptian, not Canaanite (Genesis 41:45). Moses married Zipporah, a Midianite, before the exodus (Exodus 2:21). His Cushite wife in Numbers 12:1 was not a Canaanite either; Keil and Delitzsch point out that the marriage was not wrong in itself, since God had forbidden only the daughters of Canaan. In any case the real complaint of Miriam and Aaron was about Moses’ authority, “Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses?” (12:2), and God answered it by defending his servant (12:6-10).

Solomon is different. His wives included Hittites and Zidonians, peoples of Canaan, and the writer of Kings applies the law’s warning to his Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite wives as well, because they would turn his heart “after their gods” (1 Kings 11:1-2). The danger lay in their gods, not their nation, and they did what the law said such wives would do: “his wives turned away his heart after other gods” (11:4). The New Testament keeps the principle without the national boundary. A Christian widow may marry whom she will, “only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39; compare 2 Corinthians 6:14).

Other answers Christians give

The Cushite wife was Zipporah

Gill, following Ibn Ezra and others, takes the Cushite woman to be Zipporah herself, since Cushan and Midian are named together in Habakkuk 3:7. Keil and Delitzsch think Moses married a second wife after Zipporah’s death. On either view she was not a Canaanite.

From the classic commentators

This marriage would not have been wrong in itself, as God had merely forbidden the Israelites to marry the daughters of Canaan (Exodus 34:16)C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Numbers 12, at Bible Hub

Sources

Further reading

Raised by: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. Only the verse references come from these lists.

Checked 2026-10-22. All hard questions