I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezra 9-10.

This passage has always bothered me.  A casual reading suggests that the sin of which many of the Returned Exiles were guilty was marrying wives from outside of their group.  Further, the solution goes against one of my most deeply held beliefs: that marriage should always be for life.  However, the problem was NOT that some of the Returned Exiles had married women from among the locals.  The problem was that they were following the detestable practices of the local people.  They were taking part in the idolatrous worship practices of the pagans living in the land.  Rather than have these women convert to Judaism* and give up their pagan religions before marrying them, the Jewish men were trying to have it both ways; they continued to practice Judaism but also joined their wives in their pagan religion. 

*This is the first point in the Bible I am comfortable with using the term Judaism to refer to the religion of the Old Testament.  This is not because I think the practice or beliefs changed.  Rather it is at this point that the people who practiced this religion began identifying themselves as Jews and their religion as Judaism(although that last part might not be for another few centuries).

So, an assembly of all of those whose claim to property was based on being one of the Returned Exiles were summoned to an assembly in Jerusalem or risk forfeiting their property.  That sounds like a fairly severe penalty for not making a trip which might cause someone significant hardship.  However, they included a clause which stated that the forfeiture would only happen if the elders and leaders so decided.  Then when they got together to discuss what should be done about the problem of men of the assembly practicing idolatry because of their pagan wives.  They decided that all members of the assembly married to a pagan wife should divorce her and separate themselves from the people who practiced pagan rituals.  This sounds harsh, men must divorce their wives if those wives were not Jewish (that is, not one of those who returned from Exile.  However, this is where it gets interesting.  They decided that each man who had married a pagan wife should come before the elders at a scheduled time.  This suggests to me that it was not just a matter of divorce your wife or else.  I think the point of the meeting with the elders was to allow the man to argue that his formerly pagan wife had abandoned her pagan practices and converted to Judaism.

I would guess that some of these women continued, and encouraged their husbands to join them, in pagan practices because they did not understand the conflict between Judaism and their pagan practices.  When that conflict was made clear to them, many of those would have been willing to give up their pagan practices.