“Does the Bible teach for or against interracial marriage?”
Neither. The Bible teaches that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman who are, in the sight of God, permitted to enter into the relationship for life. The Bible does not teach that this relationship can exist between two people of the same gender, because one of the purposes God had in mind for marriage from the very beginning of time, when he said to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it . . .” is thwarted when two people are of the same gender.
Since they cannot fill all the purposes for which marriage was brought into existence, they cannot lawfully marry in the sight of God, and for them to do so is an abomination, no matter what the State of New Hampshire may say!
The only time, to the best of my knowledge, the Bible speaks even indirectly to the subject of an interracial marriage was in the case of Moses who married a second wife who was an “Ethiopian” woman (Numbers 12:1). You will recall that the first wife of Moses was a woman of another nationality who was a Midianitess named Zipporah. We are not told all that transpired regarding this marriage, but by the time we come to Numbers Twelve, we find Moses marrying another woman. Perhaps by this time Zipporah was dead, or perhaps this second wife was a case of polygamy. At any rate, he married her. Perhaps he had been married to her for years at the time of the incident in Numbers Twelve, which deals more with the rebellion of Miriam and Aaron, than with the marriage of Moses.
Such eminent Hebrew scholars as Keil and others tell us that there is no way of knowing for sure whether this woman was a “” who dwelt in Arabia, or whether she was a “” or Ethiopian woman from the country of Ethiopia, which was located south of the country of Egypt in those days. If it were the case that she was a truly Ethiopian woman, she would have belonged to the descendants of Ham, and would have been, therefore, a person of another race from Moses, since he would have belonged to the race of the Shemites.
However, we must recall that Shem and Ham, along with Japheth, were the sons of Noah, and therefore brothers, and consequently, there may have been little racial difference by the time of Moses.
To the best of my knowledge, this is as close as the Bible comes to speaking of an interracial marriage, and if you remember the story, Miriam was stricken with leprosy, and Moses was vindicated. Under the Law of Moses, the children of Israel were forbidden to marry Canaanite women because the Canaanites were idolaters and likely to lead the Israelites away from following God. And if we recall the history of Israel, they did indeed marry out of their religion and they were lured into idolatry by these strange wives, even in the case of Solomon himself.
From a biblical point of view then, marriage is between a man and a woman each of whom has the right in the sight of God to marry the other, and the Bible does not appear to endorse or condemn that marriage if one of the persons is of one race and the other is of another.
