The question about Rehoboam was really on who his mother was. The problem for the questioner was the fact that she was an Ammonite and not a native Israelite. I have two posts on Naamah. Post #1 and Post #2. I will guess Deuteronomy 23 is the scripture the question stems from. I am not going to wade through the jots and tittles of Hebrew Law about marrying foreigners.

But I had to stop and think about all of the times that Hebrew men married foreign women. Moses, Salmon, Boaz, and probably David, and the men who returned to Jerusalem with Ezra and Nehemiah are the ones I thought of. Moses married a Cushite (Numbers 12), Salmon married Rahab (1 Chronicles 2:13, Matthew 1:5), Boaz married Ruth, David married Bathsheba (possibly a Hittite, 2 Samuel 11), and the men with Nehemiah (13:23) seemed to be marrying who was available. You may argue with God about the first four. I will try to contrast and compare the women of these two groups.

Group 1 – We know very little about the Cushite and Naamah, just that they had yoked themselves to the Israelite community. Rahab hid the spies in Jericho after acknowledging God and the things He had done. Ruth pledged to Naomi that she would follow her and accept Jehovah as her God. Bathsheba was part of the community and I guess David offered sacrifices for her when the first baby died. It seems to me that all of these women chose to follow God when they married into Israel.

Group 2 – These women were from Ashdod (Philistine), Ammon, and Moab, not that different from Group 1. Nehemiah 13: 23 and 24 paint a different picture of how they lived. They married the men but did not choose the God of Israel. To be fair to them their husband may not have been on fire for Jehovah either. They were not even taught to speak Hebrew, which met that they could not read Torah or participate in festivals with the Hebrew community.

A great, well-learned Pharisee wrote a New Testament commentary on this subject in 2 Corinthians 6:14-do not be unequally yoked to unbelievers. I am not sure if any of the women in Group 1 could enter the “temple” and worship God with their husbands. I have read that the Hebrew husband would “cover” the children of these marriages, but that finer point of the Law is above my paygrade. It does seem that these women did yoke themselves to the God of Israel.

Since much of the lineage of Jesus was mentioned in Group 1, I will let you question if Rehoboam should have had an Ammonite for a mother.

Homework-What did the people (men) of Israel yoke themselves to in Numbers?