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Many have assumed that Solomon's marriage to Pharaoh's daughter was the beginning of the end. But the Law never prohibited marrying a Gentile. Deuteronomy 7:3-4 prohibits intermarrying with any of the nations that Israel was supposed to destroy. But Deuteronomy 23:7 says "you shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land. Children born to them in the third generation may enter the assembly of the LORD."
Furthermore, there is no indication in Kings or Chronicles that Pharaoh's daughter continued to worship her own gods. We'll hear in 1 Kings 11 that his Moabite, Ammonite, and Sidonian wives turned him aside, but Pharaoh's daughter is conspicuously absent from this list of corrupt wives. Solomon's alliances with Egypt and with Tyre are portrayed as faithful alliances. He is not serving foreign nations, nor serving foreign gods. Rather, through this marriage Solomon is bringing the blessing of Abraham to the nations, as he is supposed to do!
In this way, Solomon anticipates the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also takes to himself a Gentile bride (bringing us into the church). But the difference is obvious: while Pharaoh's daughter is exempt from the charge that she led Solomon astray, in 3:3 it says that Solomon loved Yahweh, but in 11:1 it will say that Solomon loved many foreign women, and they turned his heart away from Yahweh, and he "went after" the gods of the nations.
Jesus is the Son of God whose heart remains pure. Jesus may have married us, but his heart has not been drawn away by our idolatry - rather, he has drawn our hearts to God.
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