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Deuteronomy 21-23

1. How is it that God allows Israel to take and even marry enemy women? (Deuteronomy 21:10-13)

“When you go out to battle against your enemies, andthe Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.

On face value, there may seem nothing wrong with this; however, if you recall, God gave a very strict command to all the Israelites NOT to marry the women of the lands they conquered:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you. (Deuteronomy 7:1-4).

Does God command one thing in one place and just the opposite in another place? No. There is a significant difference, which requires some discernment. While the first text does not give the full context for where the enemies are coming from, the second context does, namely, "the lands where you are entering... the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you." These are the nations in the Promised Land. They were not to intermarry with anyone within the boundaries of the Promised Land. 

But they were free to marry those outside the land. For confirmation of this perspective, consider a similar differentiation with respect to the matter of prisoners of war:

When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which theLord your God has given you. Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby. Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to doaccording to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the Lordyour God (Deuteronomy 20:10-18).

Notice the commands regarding those that are allowed to live hinge on location of origin. They could keep survivors from "all the cities that are very far from you..." but there were to be no survivors from "the cities of these people that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance."

Therefore, God allowed marriage to women from lands outside of the Promised Land. Thus, Solomon's first wife to the Pharaoh's daughter would have been permissable under the Law. However, he also marries women from the land of Canaan, which were not permitted, and these are the ones that led him into idolatry (cf. 1 Kings 11:1-8).