Ezra 9:1-5

TEXT AND VERSE-BY-VERSE COMMENT

C. Ezra hears about some current sins, particularly marriage to foreigners, and he prays.

1. Ezra is informed of the problem.

TEXT, Ezra 9:1-5

1

Now when these things had been completed, the princes approached me, saying, The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, according to their abominations, those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.

2

For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has intermingled with the peoples of the lands; indeed, the hands or the princes and the rulers have been foremost in this unfaithfulness.

3

And when I heard about this matter, I tore my garment and my robe, and pulled some of the hair from my head and my beard, and sat down appalled.

4

Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel on account of the unfaithfulness of the exiles gathered to me, and I sat appalled until the evening offering.

5

But at the evening offering I arose from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn, and I fell on my knees and stretched out my hands to the LORD my God;

COMMENT

Ezra 9:1-2 reveal how Ezra received the information.

Ezra 9:1 indicates a space in time since the previous verse: it could have been a few weeks, but it couldn-'t have been much more than four months (cf. Ezra 10:9). It Was the princes, the civil authorities and not the religious leaders who came to Ezra. They indicated that the three groups mentioned earlier in the book, the people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, were all involved. They may have mentioned the people of Israel first to soften the blow for the priests and other religious leaders, or else because it was the group of which they were a part.

The people of the lands were of two kinds: (1) people who had not been driven out of Palestine when Israel had settled there originally, but who had remained even through the period of Israel's exile (Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Amorites. Joshua 9:1); and (2) neighboring nations (Moabites, Egyptians, and Ammonites). These had introduced abominations into Israel's culture.

The problem of mixed marriages has already been discussed in reference to the Samaritans at Ezra 4:3. It was nothing as simple as a marriage between a Baptist and a Presbyterian, or even between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic or a Jew. These foreign people worshiped other gods in ways that were incompatible with Israel's worship, i.e., by sacred prostitution and human sacrifice. Remains of infants buried alive in jars throughout the land testify to the reality of this evil.[49] Thus the things that were most religious to them were absolutely irreligious to Israel. The O.T. never sanctions freedom of religions in this context.

[49] G. E. Wright, Biblical Archaeology (abridged), p. 12, mentions these, but minimizes them. Werner Keller, The Bible As History, devotes an entire chapter to the abominations of the heathen, p. 270ff.

For a further description of the sin involved in these marriages to foreign (strange) women, and of the warnings against them, see Proverbs 1-9, especially Proverbs 2:16; Proverbs 5:20; Proverbs 7:5, where foreign is used as a synonym of adulterous.

There was a way to marry a person of another ethnic background, as the story of Ruth illustrates, if conversion had taken place. Rahab, the harlot at Jericho, entered the Messianic line (Matthew 1:5), and Uriah the Hittite married a Jewish girl (Bathsheba, later David's wife) and became one of the thirty most respected men in David's army (2 Samuel 23:39). In the O.T. nationalities of persons are more descriptive of their religions than of their citizenship or ethnic origins.

Some of these people of the land may have been outside landholders,[50] and therefore wealthy. We know from Malachi (Ezra 2:11; Ezra 2:14) that at a date not too far from Ezra a number of Israelites divorced their first wives, who were of their race, to marry foreign women. If this is the situation which Ezra is describing, then there was a second sin, of unfaithfulness and violation of a previous marriage, involved as well. The temptation would be strong; intermarriage would offer the people of Israel a chance to move up economically; it would offer the foreign peoples a way to enter the approved social structure of the country and solidify their holdings. In the process, spiritual and human values would be crushed.

[50] Anchor Bible, op. cit., p. 77.

It was all the more disgrace that the nation's leaders, religious as well as civil, were the leaders in this evil.

Ezra 9:3-5 portray Ezra's reaction,

Ezra 9:3 shows Ezra alone, but in public view in the Temple compound, expressing his dismay. The tearing of garments was a method frequently used throughout the Bible for this purpose (Numbers 14:6; Acts 14:14). Pulling out a part of his hair and beard would be a much less frequent mark of profound humility, sorrow, or disgrace, since the beard in particular was a symbol of one's age and therefore wisdom and honor (Isaiah 15:2). Note that Mephibosheth neglected his beard at a particularly evil time (2 Samuel 19:24).

His sitting down and showing his horror (cf. Job 2:13) would continue to impress his feelings on the public.

Ezra 9:4 testifies of the effect this had on the community. All of those who feared, i.e., reverenced God (trembled at the words of God), who were similarly dismayed at the conduct of the evildoers, gathered about him as he continued to sit in an attitude of apparently speechless astonishment into the middle of the afternoon.

Ezra 9:5 portrays Ezra's taking the problem to God in prayer, torn robe and all. Stretching forth the hands was the attitude of petition.

WORD STUDIES

PEG: Nail, tentpeg (Ezra 9:8, Yathed): the basic idea is of that which is driven in firmly, or fixed fast, to render something stable. A good ruler or prince, on whom the welfare of the state depends (i.e., hangs down), would be described as a tentpeg (Zechariah 10:4).

BONDAGE (Ezra 9:8-9): condition of laboring, working, serving. A servant or a slave would be described by this term. It occurs in the name Ebed, or Obed; remember David's grandfather in Ruth 4:17? It is used of tilling the ground also (Genesis 4:2). In slightly different form it is used in a religious sense, of our service or worship.

WALL (Ezra 9:9, Gader): that which surrounds or encloses. The three consonants appear in different order in our words guard and garden. So God guards His people, as His garden.

OFFERING (Ezra 9:4-5, Minchah): for a description of this particular offering see Exodus 29:38-46. The word emphasizes its nature as a gift or present. Although it can describe offerings of either meat or grain (it is used of both Abel's and Cain's offering, Genesis 4:3-4), it usually designates the meal (grain) offering. By its nature as a gift, its chief purpose was to portray fellowship between God and His people.