The Warning Against Partnership With the Nations

Let a person keep matters in his heart, that he not enter into a partnership of affairs with a gentile, for in the end he will cut a covenant with him. Abraham cut a covenant with Abimelech, as it says, "And Abraham took sheep and oxen" and so forth. The ministering angels said: Master of the universe, You chose for Yourself one unique man out of seventy nations, and he has cut a covenant with the nations of the world! He said to them: I gave him an only son, and I say to him, "Offer him up before Me"; if he offers him up, well and good, and if not, you are right to speak. As it says, "And it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham" (Genesis 22:1). From here they said: there is no nation in the world that subjugated Israel more than this one, as the reward for the covenant that Abraham cut with Abimelech king of the Philistines (alone). From here they said: anyone who enters into a partnership of affairs with a gentile will in the end cut a covenant with him. And if he is a Torah scholar, he degrades his Torah and degrades his father's name, and he widows his wife and orphans his children, and he does not fill out his days, and he attaches an evil name to himself and to his children and to his children's children until the end of all generations.