Here’s what the Bible says about discrimination based on who you’re related to:
Pharaoh treated Abraham well because he had a beautiful sister who Pharaoh didn’t know was also Abraham’s wife.
God, Jesus, and Paul insist that you have to honor your parents, even though not all parents are honorable. Under God’s law, you could be cursed or even killed for saying bad things about your parents. According to the idiot who wrote Proverbs 30, your eyes will be pecked out by ravens and eaten by vultures if you ever scorn or mock your parents. And Jesus says it’s wrong to donate money to God instead of using it to help out your parents.
Members of a priest’s family can eat the food that people offer “to God”, but nobody else gets to. Even God doesn’t eat it.
God says you can’t treat your younger son like he’s your firstborn just because he’s the son of your favorite wife.
God told Gideon to kill all the Midianites, who were oppressing his people. But Gideon wouldn’t have killed the kings of Midian if they hadn’t killed Gideon’s brothers. Later, the author of Judges acts like the Israelites were wrong not to be loyal to the family of Gideon just because Gideon had done good things for them.
The people of the city of Shechem preferred to have just Abimelek rule over them rather than have all his brothers rule over them too, because Abimelek was the son of a woman from Shechem.
David wanted to be kind to Mephibosheth just because he was the son of David’s best friend. (He was also the grandson of David’s enemy.) David also wanted to be kind to the son of Nahash the Ammonite king just because Nahash had supposedly been kind to him.
A psalm says God will make people mighty because their parents like his commands. David thought God was going to show unfailing love to David’s descendants forever. He didn’t really do that, though. In fact, God said David’s descendants would never be safe from the sword, because of what David did.
Solomon says if you fear God, your children will be safe. And if you’re good, your children will be blessed, and your grandchildren will inherit money from you. God blesses or curses your whole household depending on how righteous you are. Solomon says a servant will end up being favored over a son, if the servant is more prudent than the son. And he claims that God will bless a whole land if its king is born to nobles.
God says if three righteous men lived in a sinful country, he would only spare those three men. He wouldn’t spare their children just for being related to the righteous men. He says he won’t spare a wicked man for having a righteous father, and he won’t kill a righteous man for having a wicked father.
Discriminating against someone’s relatives
You’re not allowed to enter God’s assembly if your ancestors ten generations ago were married when they weren’t allowed to be married.
If you don’t obey all of God’s laws, God will inflict extreme curses not just on you, but also on your children and all your descendants. And God will also get your fiance raped, and force you to eat your children.
Solomon says God curses the whole household of the wicked. Solomon also says you shouldn’t go to your relatives when you need help. He says it’s better to go to your friend, or your family’s friend. (At least if they don’t live too far away.)
Descendants of Caleb1 are stereotyped in the Bible as surly and mean. And the author of 2 Kings acts like you can’t be expected to be a good person if you’re related even by marriage to an evil person.
When David took a census because God told him to, God said he was going to punish David for that. But then he punished the rest of Israel for it instead. David pointed out that God was punishing the wrong people, and suggested that God should punish him and his family instead. Which makes a lot more sense than what God was doing, but it still doesn’t make any sense. Because David’s family hadn’t done anything wrong. (And also because David hadn’t done anything wrong, unless obeying God is wrong.)
David looked forward to seeing God wipe out all the descendants of his enemies. The sons of Korah wrote a song to try to get somebody’s daughter to forget about her family and her country.
God’s chosen king Jeroboam was evil, so God chose a new king for Israel. He had the new king kill all of Jeroboam’s relatives and slaves. Then God decided that king was evil too, so he did the same thing to the new king’s family. Later, God had Jehu do the same thing to King Ahab’s relatives and slaves,2 and then God punished Jehu’s family because Jehu had done what God told him to do.
God didn’t like Jehoiachin, so he declared that none of Jehoiachin’s offspring could ever prosper or reign over Judah.
God announced through the prophet Jeremiah that he had decided prophecy wouldn’t be allowed anymore. If anyone claimed to have a message from God, God would punish that person’s whole household.
The people in Jesus’s hometown somehow found the idea offensive that a member of a familiar family from their own town could be a wise miracle-working prophet. And Jesus said that’s how it always is; prophets are never honored by their relatives.
Jesus acts like if you’re a descendant of murderers, you might as well be a murderer yourself. He says you should never invite your relatives to dinner, only invite poor and disabled people. And he says people who don’t hate their families can’t be his disciples.
Matthew claims that the Jews volunteered to have their descendants take the blame for killing Jesus.
Paul says if your mother or grandmother is a widow and in need, you should be the one who has to help her. If you don’t provide for your relatives, you have “denied the faith”.
Against an unfavored person’s children
One of Noah’s sons accidentally saw him naked, so Noah cursed not his son, but his son’s son and all his descendants to be slaves forever.
All of Job’s children got killed just because they were related to the guy that God and Satan had decided to torment for no good reason.
The children of a fool are not safe from being cursed along with him, at least according to Eliphaz. Job said children will go blind if their parents are bribed to slander their friends, because God likes to punish the children of the wicked instead of actually punishing the wicked. Job said God also makes sure the children always go hungry and get killed with the sword. Not because they did anything wrong, but because their parents did. God confirmed that Job had spoken the truth about him.
Some men thought David would appreciate it if they murdered the innocent son of David’s enemy Saul. David did not approve, and he had those guys killed. But later, God withheld rain from his people for three years until almost all of the rest of the descendants of Saul had been killed, because of what Saul had done, not because of anything the descendants had done. And David was happy to go along with that.
David encouraged God to not just punish the wicked, but also punish their little children. He wanted his enemy’s children to be beggars who no one would take pity on. And somebody else wrote a song about how great it would be to smash his oppressor’s babies against the rocks.
God said he wouldn’t love his wife’s children because of what his wife did. And God killed somebody’s children just because Joshua had said whoever rebuilt Jericho would lose his oldest and youngest children. God doesn’t like it when people say he punishes people for what their parents did, even though he does do that.
After some men tricked a king into having Daniel thrown into the lions’ den, the king had those men and their wives and children thrown into the lions’ den.
In one of Jesus’ parables, the character representing God was going to have a man and his wife and children enslaved to pay for the man’s debt.
Discriminating against people who aren’t related to someone
When God drowned nearly everyone in the world, he decided to keep a few people alive just because they were part of righteous Noah’s family. It never says those family members who weren’t Noah were righteous. So given what it does say, I’ll have to assume they were evil.
Abraham said he didn’t want to quarrel with Lot because they were close relatives. If that’s his reason, I guess he would have been fine with quarreling with him if they hadn’t been close relatives.
The angels God sent to Sodom were going to spare Lot’s wife and sons-in-law, and did spare Lot’s daughters, even though Lot was the only righteous person there. Or at least Peter thinks he was, but even Lot wasn’t actually a good person. God only spared him because he was Abraham’s cousin.
Abraham insisted that his son marry one of his relatives. Samson’s parents also would have preferred him to marry one of his own relatives.
When Jacob thought Esau and his men were coming to attack him and his family, he took his family with him and went to confront Esau. But he put his servant-wives and their children in front, and his favorite wife and her son safely in back.
God made rules that anyone who approached his sanctuary or offered him incense would be killed, unless they were part of Aaron’s family. (Not that being sons of Aaron helped much…) Everybody acted like good king Uzziah was doing something terribly wrong when he made an incense offering to God, because he wasn’t a descendant of Aaron.
God told the descendants of Jacob not to get into a war with the Edomites, who were the descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau. And he told them not to steal anything from them. They weren’t even allowed to despise an Edomite. But everybody else in Caanan, he wanted them to plunder and kill.
There’s an oddly specific biblical law that says you can’t cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. There’s no rule against cooking a young goat in an unrelated goat’s milk,3 but don’t do it to the young of the goat you got the milk from!
God’s law says only the brother of a dead man can marry the dead man’s widow. Boaz couldn’t marry Ruth until he had made sure that no one more closely related to her dead husband wanted to marry her.
The Israelites killed almost everyone in Jericho, but they spared the family of the prostitute who had helped their spies by lying. Jephthah’s half-brothers drove him away and said he wouldn’t get any inheritance, because he wasn’t a son of their father’s wife.
Asaph says God says to a wicked person that the wicked person is wrong to slander his own brother. He makes it sound like the fact that it’s his brother makes it worse, so I guess God would prefer people to only slander unrelated people.
Solomon says even the relatives of the poor shun them, but the mere friends of the poor avoid them even more. Solomon’s favorite girlfriend thinks only siblings can kiss in public without being despised.
A woman complained that she and another woman had agreed to eat both of their sons, but after they ate her son, the other woman hid her own son so they didn’t get to eat him.
God says a priest isn’t allowed to defile himself by being near a dead person, unless it’s a dead family member. Then it’s fine for him to defile himself.
Jesus says the children of kings don’t have to pay taxes.
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