You shall not make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son.
Not to intermarry with members of the seven Canaanite nations
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֹא תִתְחַתֵּן בָּם בִּתְּךָ לֹא־תִתֵּן לִבְנוֹ וּבִתּוֹ לֹא־תִקַּח לִבְנֶךָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מהתחתן בכופרים. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא תתחתן בם, ובאר החתנות מהו בתך לא תתן לבנו, ובבאור אמרו דרך חתנות אסרה תורה. והעובר על לאו זה יש בענשו הפרש, וזה שהבועל ארמית כשבא עליה בפרהסיא כל מי שיהרגהו והוא דבק בעבירה הנה קיים העונש כמו שעשה פנחס לזמרי, ואמרו (סנהדרין פ"א:) הבועל ארמית קנאין פוגעין בו, אבל בתנאים שאמרנו והוא שיבא עליה בפרהסיא ובשעת מעשה וכמעשה שהיה, ואם לא עשה זה בפרהסיא או שפירש ולא פגעו בו קנאין הנה הוא מחוייב כרת אבל לא התבאר זה הכרת בתורה, אמרו לא פגעו בו קנאים מהו והתבאר שהוא בכרת מאמרו כי חלל יהודה קדש ה' אשר אהב ובעל בת אל נכר יכרת ה' לאיש אשר יעשנה ער ועונה מכלל שהוא בכרת. וכשהתאמת על אדם שהוא בעל ארמית בעדים והתראה לוקה מדאורייתא ודע זה. (ואתחנן, קדושה הלכות איסורי ביאה פי"ב):
He prohibited us from marrying heretics. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And you shall not marry them" (Deuteronomy 7:3). And he explained what marriage is - "do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons." And in the explanation (Avodah Zarah 36b), they said, "The Torah forbade [it when it is] by way of marriage." And there are distinctions about the punishment of one who transgresses this negative commandment. And that is that when the one who has sexual relations with an Aramean has sexual relations in public - anyone who kills him while he is clinging to the sin has carried out the punishment, as Pinchas did to Zimri (Numbers 25:6-8). And they said (Sanhedrin 81a), "One who has sexual relations with an Aramean, zealots may attack him" - but with the conditions that we mentioned. And that is that he has relations with her in public, and [that the punishment is meted out] at the time of the act - like the story that happened (with Pinchas and Zimri). But if he did not do this in public or he [already] separated and the zealots did not attack him, he is liable for excision. However this excision is not made clear in the Torah: They said, "[When] zealots did not attack him, what is [the law]?" And it is explained that it is excision (cutting off), from His saying, "for Judah has profaned what is holy to the Lord - what He loves - and espoused daughters of alien gods. The Lord will cut off from the man that does this all living offspring" (Malachi 2:11-12). [This] implies that it is with excision. However when it becomes confirmed about a man - with witnesses and a warning - that he had sexual relations with an Aramean, he is lashed, by Torah law. And know this. (See Parashat Vaetchanan; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Intercourse 12.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a flat, unconditional prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
- Lashes (malkot)
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite As the catalog records it: binding with qualification
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 4QMMT B 75-82 The catalog describes this reception as: stringent reinterpretation (read by some scholars as a priestly purity extension of intermarriage concerns, though the passage does not cite Deut 7:3 directly)
- CD 5:7-11 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Numbers Rabbah 8:4 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.29 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 8.190-198 The catalog describes this reception as: narrative illustration
The New Testament
- 2 Corinthians 6:14 reinterpreted it 'Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers' — generalized to believer/unbeliever pairing rather than ethnic-Canaanite scope
- 1 Corinthians 7:39 reinterpreted it widow may remarry 'only in the Lord'
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:221 carried a parallel
- Q 5:5 carried a parallel, with divergence
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi CH regulates marriage dissolution and property rights within the marriage institution but contains no prohibition on interethnic or interreligious marriage; marriage alliances across ethnic groups were standard diplomatic practice throughout Mesopotamia Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§137-149 (divorce and marriage dissolution law) Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite vassal treaties Hittite vassal treaties contain stipulations on dynastic marriage alliances as a mechanism of treaty bonding; the broader diplomatic pattern is also documented in the Amarna Letters (a distinct corpus, ed. Moran 1992) recording Egyptian royal intermarriage with Babylonian, Mitanni, and Hittite houses. Deuteronomy 7:3 prohibits precisely this connubium as a vehicle of religious contamination Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Stipulation sections including clauses on dynastic marriage alliances Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (SBL, 1999)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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Article 16
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 16(1) establishes the right to marry without any limitation due to race, nationality, or religion; the commandment prohibits marriage alliances with members of specified ethnic-national groups, restricting the right to marry on the basis of the partner's national origin.
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Article 23
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 23(2) guarantees men and women of marriageable age the right to marry, with no exception for national or ethnic origin; the commandment prohibits marriage with members of the seven Canaanite nations on grounds of communal-religious identity.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment carries a punishment of thirty-nine lashes (malkot) for violating the intermarriage prohibition; post-Enlightenment penal codes prohibit judicial corporal punishment and treat personal choices about marriage as outside the scope of criminal sanction.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; judicially administered flogging constitutes degrading punishment under authoritative treaty-body interpretation.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that corporal jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of the Sanhedrin; the malkot sanction exists de jure but has not been enforced for approximately two millennia.