What did God require of Israel regarding separation from the Gentiles?
God required Israel to be a separated people: they were not to co-mingle with Gentiles, not to intermarry, and to have nothing to do with the pagan Gentiles around them. They were never told to evangelize them. This separation was emphasized as carrying into the New Testament.
Les teaches that God kept emphasizing that these covenant people—the Jews, these Israelites—were not to co-mingle with the Gentiles. They were to be a separated people. They were not to intermarry, and they were to have nothing to do with the pagan Gentiles around them. They were never told to go and evangelize them. Les points out that this division kept getting wider, and it would carry all the way into the New Testament. Even in Acts chapter 10, Peter, a law-keeping Jew, told Cornelius that it was an unlawful thing for him, a Jew, to keep company with Gentiles of another nation. But God had shown him that something else was now in store: He was going to turn to the Gentiles. Up until that time, it was predominantly only His covenant people.