Verse 10:30 starts laying down the guidelines for marriage,
again:
Our daughters will not be married
to the sons of any of our foreign neighbors. We will not allow our sons to
marry their daughters.
Many times this is used to show how God is racist and is not
tolerant of other cultures. First since HE made those cultures and different
peoples, this is not really an issue. The real key is God does not want the
nation to be corrupt. He knows if the other nations practices creep in, that
will cause His people to adopt those customs resulting in a drift from God. So
God wants His people to remain faithful, not necessarily genetically pure.
Verse 12:45 shows a tight coupling with David and his
lineage:
Just as David and his son Solomon
instructed them to do, they served God and purified the people with the help of
the singers and gatekeepers.
If we look at the kings of Israel, we see David and Solomon
as flawed as they were are held as the head of the ruling class of Israel. This
is critical to understand that from this family eventually comes the perfect
ruler in Jesus. So when you read about David and Solomon then say yes but they
failed by doing this or that. When held to the standard of history and God, we
all fail except for Jesus.
Verses 13:26 & 27 continues using Solomon as an example
but applies it to then:
26 This is
the very thing that caused King Solomon’s downfall. In all the world, there was
no king like him. God loved him dearly and made him king over all
Israel. Yet these foreign wives led Solomon into sin. 27 Now
we discover that you have embraced the same wicked ways, betraying our God by
marrying these foreign women.
For some reason we thing that if we go with our hearts
we can eventually change someone to our ways. God knows otherwise and nature
shows it. If water is let go on a hill it will follow “the path of least
resistance” and take the easy path. Nowhere in the Bible does following God
follow the easy path. Jesus makes it clear by saying we enter by the narrow
gate and not the wide one. So when God gives us the warning, He knows we will
tend to take the easiest path which is not following Him. That is when we fail
and lose connection with God.