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Race Relations
349
from following me, to serve other gods” (Deut. 7 :4). This same
demand for religious purity also underlay Ezra’s requirement that the
exiles who had returned from captivity in Babylon put away their
foreign wives (Ezra 10:10-11).8 As Pope declares, “Racial inter
marriage as such does not seem to be either prohibited or advocated
in the Bible.”9
The election of Israel for the covenant relationship with God did
not imply any special privileges for her. God had chosen her for
His own purposes. Her people were “like the Ethiopians” to Him
(Amos 9 :7). The destiny for which she had been chosen demanded
of her special humility and faithfulness, for her mission was by her
sufferings to bring salvation to all nations and peoples. This fuller
understanding of her vocation and her destiny was made clear by the
prophets, especially by Isaiah of the Babylonian exile who represented
God as saying,
“Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear.’ ” (Isa. 45:22-23)
The inclusiveness of God’s love for all peoples was dramatized and
popularized in the stories of Ruth and Jonah. Ruth was a Moabitess
who was received into the national heritage of Israel. As the great
grandmother of David she held an important place in the messianic
tradition. The postexilic story of Jonah represents a strong condemna
tion of Israel’s failure to live up to the full implications of her
monotheistic faith and the universalism of the prophets.
Despite a few passages which are sometimes used to support the
view that Jesus thought of his ministry in particularistic terms as
being intended primarily for the Jews, the overwhelming testimony of
the Gospels is that his mission was universal in its purpose and in
cluded Gentiles as well as Jews.10 The story of the healing of the
daughter of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30) is some-
8 The same consideration applies to other verses frequently cited as pro
hibiting interracial marriage—e.g., Genesis 28:1, 8; Hosea 5:7; Amos 3:2;
Matthew 10:5-6.
9 Pope,
op. cit.,
p. 148. In this connection see also Everett Tilson,
Segregation
and the Bible,
Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1958, ch. 2.
10 See Tilson,
op. cit.,
ch. V.