We Will Not Give Our Daughters

“We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.”

I suppose there are some fathers in this world who are glad to get rid of their daughters (though I cannot imagine such a thing). Then there are fathers who can never let go of their daughters. There are even fathers who abuse their daughters (woe to them). There are fathers who are estranged from their daughters (shame on them—every attempt must be thoroughly made to reverse this, if we are Christians). Every Christian father must love his daughter and even, painful as it is, give her away. But some are taken from us in the prime of life by sickness and death. Daughters are precious. In fact, the entire human race needs daughters, just as it needs sons. The pattern of life is that parents care for their children and train them, so that they will be able to live life for themselves and others and so repeat the pattern. Society is dependent on daughters and on sons. They are the promise of hope for tomorrow. As parents get older, they see this more clearly.

When our children are young we are involved in the nitty-gritty acts of survival. It is the daily grind that sometimes seems impossible to bear. The routine is mundane with little children. They must be pampered and cared for with tenderness and love. They must be trained and guarded. All so that they will do the same. As Christians, we recognize that we do this for God’s glory and because he gives us our children. The Scriptures point out the extreme possibility of a mother forgetting her children: “‘Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you’” (Isa. 49:15).

In Nehemiah 10, we have a strange situation. The leaders and the people of Israel have bound themselves to a covenant obligation. They will not permit any inter-marriage among the nations surrounding them or dwelling among them. In Nehemiah 13 we have another situation that is very extreme: “In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, ‘You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves’” (Neh. 13:23–25; see also Ezra 9:1, 2; 10:10, 11).

These inter-marriages that both Nehemiah and Ezra are against have one thing in common. They were leading people into idolatry, and idolatry is a great sin against God. It is a great sin because it places God in some sort of rivalry with other gods, and God has no rivals. I dare say that the effects of breaking up these marriages had severe repercussions. We are not told about them. The Ezra passage is quite sobering. There have been two ways to interpret the Ezra passage, which promotes marriage dissolution. First, any dealing with sin must always be severe and radical. There must be a decisive break. This is why Ezra breaks down with mourning over sin. Purity of the remnant must be maintained. They have just spent 70 years in captivity as a result of their idolatry and immorality. They must not provoke God any further. It would be disastrous to do so. Second, though Ezra’s praying is thoroughly biblical, the way they went about sorting out the problem was wrong. Marriage is a creation ordinance. It cannot simply be undone without major consequences. If God’s Law prohibits inter-marriage (marriage with a pagan) and it does (see also 1 Cor. 7:39; 2 Cor. 6:14–16), then it also prohibits any idea of easy divorce. But this does not deal with the sons and daughters from those inter-marriages, let alone the relationships that existed in the marriages. It would make sense, I think, to prohibit any future marriages.

This whole issue poses difficulties for missionaries in foreign cultures where a man has more than one wife and then becomes a believer. It has generally been the practice that all wives after the first one should be divorced (and I presume free to marry again since the first marriage was no marriage in light of God’s view of marriage–one man with one woman). This does not answer the dilemma in the Old Testament of a man having more than one wife (e.g.; Jacob, David, etc). It was most certainly not God’s plan for those men to have more than one wife (notice all the subsequent issues that flow from it). The problem is, of course, the children from all those wives, and this I think will always be a dilemma for such situations (as it is with divorce today where children are involved). As fathers, those men should endeavor then to provide all that is possible for their children.

You can see that whichever route you go, there are substantial hardships. It is biblical to never enter such marriages (either with an unbeliever or with more than one spouse). So the Ezra incident reveals that there are elements from both views that are probably correct. It is biblical to seek after God’s glory and honor, yet it is heartless to abandon spouses and children. Sin is messy and has far– reaching tentacles, even when conversion has taken place. The Nehemiah 10 passage seeks to prevent both from happening, but the Nehemiah 13 passage is closely allied with Ezra 9 (although it could be read that Nehemiah sought to prevent future marriages rather than do away with the present wrong ones). Nehemiah understood the principle of not leaving the gate open to let the enemy in. He even chased away foreign traders who wanted to stay by the walls of Jerusalem, so that after the Sabbath, they could get in and perhaps find a good place to trade. There were even foreigners who lived within Jerusalem (insider-trading, even in the Old Testament). He promised them that he would deal harshly with them if they stuck around the walls (Neh. 13:15–21). The principle of not opening the gate is seen in Nehemiah’s words: “We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.”

Prevention is better than trying to fix the subsequent problems (which might be lifelong and never fixed). Would not Christian fathers or mothers do all that it takes to protect their sons and daughters from all possible consequences that could arise due to bad decisions? I think they would. The way to do this is, of course, to start when our children are young. All training is painful, but it yields beneficial results. Bad training leads to bad results, so the training has to be biblical. Nehemiah praised those in his day who had made the difficult choice to be separate from their culture by referring to them as: “all who have knowledge and understanding” (Neh. 10:28).

Our children will one day be responsible for their choices and decisions. Parents can help them. Sometimes God can do his saving work in a child without a parent, but generally it is through parents, who must train the child. It does not guarantee that they will be Christians or that they will make the right decisions because they too are sinners, but it is what God requires of us. This work must be suffused with love and kindness and patience. All believers know when they have sinned and offended God because they have the Holy Spirit dwelling with them. So too, children must have this principle inculcated in them, that they are bound in love and loyalty to their parents in the sight of God. You don’t have to teach them this. You must simply show them by your relationship to God. The result of this will be that their children in years to come will also be taught the ways of the Lord.