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

I have always been bothered by this passage because, on a surface reading, it seems cold, uncaring, and xenophobic.  However, a closer reading indicates that it is more nuanced than it seems at first glance.  First, I need to summarize what the passage says happened.  Some of the leaders of the returned Exiles came to Ezra and complained about the returned Exiles intermarrying with the pagan peoples who had been living in the land while they were in Exile.  Ezra was distressed by this information and publicly prayed about how terrible such intermarriage was.  The people gathered and demanded that those who had intermarried put aside their foreign wives and the children they had by those wives.  As I said, this seems cold and uncaring.  I first realized that it was a little more complicated than it seems at first when I paid attention to the fact that the people responded to the decision that the men should separate themselves from their foreign wives and children by saying that it could not be done in a day or two.  That was followed up by the appointment of men to investigate each of the cases.  If it was just a matter of, “You married a foreign woman, send her and her children away or be shunned by polite society,” it would not have required any investigation.  Then I looked a little closer at Ezra’s prayer.  In his prayer he said, “Shall we then break your commands again and intermarry with the peoples who commit such detestable practices?” The key here was that the foreign wives were still practicing the worship of idols, and raising their children to do so.  It still feels cold and uncaring, but the fact that it took them three months to resolve all of the issues tells me that it was not the simple, uncaring thing which it reads as.  At least part of what was going on here was that some of these men had married their wives in order to enter into business and economic deals with pagans (in his prayer Ezra mentioned God’s prohibition against the Israelites signing treaties of friendship with the pagan peoples).  I still struggle with how this passage describes how they handled this.  However, I think it is important to realize that they strove to find a way to deal with their disobedience to God’s commands, and they did not use a one size fits all solution.

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

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

When Ezra learned that the returned exiles were sinning by making alliances with and marrying idolaters, he did not just ignore it, or throw up his hands and say, “Well, that’s too bad, I hope they repent,” or even preach a sermon about their sin.  No, he publicly abased himself before God and prayed.  Others joined Ezra in his prayer and abasement and prayer about the sin.  And their prayer was not about other people’s sin, they prayed, “We have sinned…”  Then they decided to enter into a covenant with God and each other to change their behavior, to stop sinning and make good for their past sins.  If you, like me, see God’s judgement coming upon our society because of our sins, let us acknowledge our part in that sin and pray to God to transform our hearts, and the hearts of those around us, so that we change our ways and live the life He desires us to live.

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

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

When reading today’s passage I have often been bothered by the fact that the writer emphasizes the sin of the people of having married foreign women.  After all, why would it be wrong to bring women into the family of faith?  As I have been writing off and on this spring, that is because that is not quite what the passage is telling us.  In order to understand what is going on here you have to start with what those who brought the problem to Ezra’s attention told him.  They told him that the people of Israel had not kept themselves separate from the detestable practices of the people around them.  One can easily misread what they said to think they were upset with the interaction with the people around them, but a careful reading of the entire passage shows there is more to it than that.  When the Returned Exiles gathered to address the issue, they agreed that those who had married “foreign women” needed to send those wives away, but they said it would take more than a day or two to accomplish this.  Why would it take more than a day or two to settle this if it was just a matter of all the men who had married a woman not of the group of Returned Exiles putting aside their wives?  To me, this says that they had to evaluate whether these wives had continued in the detestable practices of their people or had embraced the worship of God and all that entailed.

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

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

When Ezra learned that many of the Returned Exiles had intermarried with the people living in the land, we need to interpret that in terms of yesterday’s passage.  Ezra’s response, and that of the rest of the people, was not about those of the Returned Exiles who married those in the land who chose to follow God’s Laws.  It was about those who married and allied with those who continued to worship idols and follow other practices contrary to God’s Law.  In addition to yesterday’s passage where it stated that everyone who separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbors was welcomed to take part in the Passover, we have in today’s passage an indication that resolving who had violated this prohibition was not just a matter of looking at their wives’ parentage.  Rather, each case needed to be looked at on an individual basis.

There is another thing in this passage I want to look at.  When Ezra came forth and publicly prostrated himself before God because of those among the Returned Exiles who were joining themselves with idolaters, many of the people joined him.  This tells us that many people had been concerned about the problem, but no one was willing to step forward and do something about it.  I want to be fair here, it takes a special kind of person to mobilize a group to deal with this sort of problem.  The lesson we learn here is that we are not alone in being grieved by the sins which are damaging our society.  We should take heart from such knowledge.  We can also learn that many times it only takes one person willing to stand up to such things to bring about change.  When we see sin around us, let us prostrate ourselves before God and ask Him to show us what to do.

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

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.

We saw in yesterday’s passage how those living in the land who turned from the detestable practices common among their people and adopted true worship of God were welcome among the returned exiles.  In today’s passage we have an account of how many among the returned exiles had married women from among the people living in the land and adopted some of their practices.  While the passage focuses on the fact that they had married women from among those living in the land we can see that it was the fact that these women had not given up the pagan practices which was the problem.  In fact, I suspect that what brought this problem up was that many of the most prominent among the returned exiles had formed marriage alliances with the prominent among those living in the land and were corruptly serving the interests of their new families against the interests of the returned exile community.

When Ezra proposed that the people must separate themselves from the people of the land and the women from among them which many of them had married, the people agreed but said that it was more complicated than could be resolved while they were all gathered in Jerusalem.  So, it was decided that those who had married women who were not part of the returned exiles would meet with the elders of their villages to resolve things.  This tells us that this was not a blanket putting aside of wives from among the locals.  I read this as telling us that some of the women in these marriages had abandoned pagan worship and embraced the worship of God.  I conclude that the problem was not that they married women from outside their community.  Rather the problem was that they married women who did not share their faith, which led them to worship practices unacceptable to God.