Deeper Commentary

Ezra 9:1 Now when these things were done- There is an intended anticlimax here, a juxtaposition of God's amazing grace to the exiles in Ezra 8 now contrasted with their fall into sin. The same thing happens at Acts 5:1, and often in the Biblical record. The "things" may refer to Ezra 8:36, where Ezra has to deliver Persian civil law to the local satraps. I have discussed earlier how this was part of the deal Ezra cut with the emperor- to be supported in teaching Jewish religious law to the Jews, whilst enforcing Persian civil law. He came to Jerusalem on the 4th day of the fifth month (Ezra 7:8; 8:33); but called an assembly of the Jews on the 20th day of the ninth month (Ezra 10:9). We note that he gave priority to establishing Persian civil law before moving on to teach God's law. And the first thing he did was to attack the issue of Jewish intermarriage; it's as if he had an agenda and this was at the top of it.

The princes drew near to me saying, The people of Israel, and the priests and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands and are following their abominations, even those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites-

The majority of Ezra's memoir is in Ezra 9,10 and concerns how he dealt with intermarriage. I think he was haunted by it. The most significant thing he did was to break up 112 families, and he realizes he was likely wrong to have done it. And the problem reappeared 13 years later in Nehemiah's time- so he achieved nothing. The drawing near of the princes was surely not to inform Ezra of something of which he wasn't aware. Rather it was to pressure Ezra. For Ezra surely knew of the intermarriages- if he was indeed teaching the torah to the Jews, he must have realized that some of them were married to "foreign women". Therefore his casting of himself down in shock horror surely has an element of the theatrical to it. He will record in Ezra 10 how it was Shecaniah who suggested the idea of divorce- and again, Ezra goes along with him. Likewise here, it seems his response is due to the pressure from "the princes", rather than from his own conscience.

See on :14; Ezra 6:21. Ez. 42:20 commands for the restored Kingdom: “He measured it by the four sides: it had a wall round about, five hundred reeds long, and five hundred broad, to make a separation between the sanctuary and the profane place”. This reflected the difference between God’s people, His “sanctuary” (Ps. 114:2), and the surrounding world. But Judah did not ‘separate’ themselves from the surrounding tribes but instead married them and worshipped their idols (s.w. Ezra 9:1 “The people of Israel... have not separated themselves from the people of the land, doing according to their abominations... for they have taken of their daughters for themselves”). The same word for “abominations” occurs in the same context in Mal. 2:11: “Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god”. Yet it had been emphasized that the temple system Ezekiel described was to be free of all the “abominations” [s.w.] previously committed by Israel (Ez. 43:8; 44:6,7,13).

The "people of the land" ["lands" is not a helpful rendering] are not the same as the Canaanites, etc. They are accused of doing "like" what those people did. Many of those nations listed didn't exist in Ezra's time. In Ezra 9:1, the people of the land were doing the abominations of the original inhabitants of the land- that's the point. The term "people[s] of the land", am ha'eretz, is used of the large community of Jews who had remained in the land after the exile (s.w. "none remained, except the poorest sort of the people of the land", 2 Kings 24:14; "the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to work the vineyards and fields", 2 Kings 25:12). They were "the people that remained in the land" over whom Gedaliah was made ruler (2 Kings 25:22). "The people of the land" is a term specifically used of Judah (2 Chron. 23:13,20,21; 26:21;33:25; 36:1). Only a few chapters after those usages, we find "the people of the land" opposing the Judean exiles in rebuilding the temple (Ezra 4:4), although they were worshipping the same God of Israel since the king of Assyria had brought them "up" to live in Jerusalem (Ezra 4:2). We note that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were bound up with Chronicles in the original scrolls; and there are so many similarities of language and style between Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah that it would seem they are from the same author (possibly Ezra). So the term "people of the land" is likely to have the same meaning in Ezra as it does in Chronicles- where it means "the people of Judah living in their land". Admittedly, the term "peoples of the land" can elsewhere refer to the tribes who lived in Israel before the Hebrews arrived- as well as the Jews who lived in the land. But the context surely requires us to read it in the latter sense. Modern ultra Orthodox Jews use the Ezra 9,10 precedent to argue against marriage to other Jews who aren't also ultra Orthodox.

Ezra was trying to resolve this problem by redefining God's people to exclude those Jews who had remained in the land. His concern was because the Jewish exiles who had returned under Zerubbabel had married the Jews who were already in the land. And so he creates a situation whereby if they didn't separate themselves from the peoples of the land, then they would be separated from the congregation of God's people (:8 s.w.). It is of course so that we cannot be both with the world and with God. But Ezra is legalistically playing with definitions, and trying to label the spiritually second class people of God as in fact not being His people at all. Indeed God had separated His people from the other peoples (1 Kings 8:53; Lev. 20:24), but they had to make the freewill choice to separate themselves (Ezra 10:11). If they did, then God was working with them to separate them from the world and unto Himself. By not doing so, they were precluding His help and denying fellowship with Him. But Ezra is making a fundamental error in defining who is "in" and "out" of God's people. And ignoring the huge sins and impurity of the Jews whilst in exile, as documented by Ezekiel and Isaiah.

A case can be made that "the peoples of the lands" refers to the Jews who had remained in the land after the exile, and had assimilated with the practices of the Gentiles living there. This group later became the Samaritans. There was tension between those who had returned from exile, and those Jews who had remained in the land at the time of the exile. Those who remained had been given "fields and vineyards" by the Babylonians, and those properties had belonged to the wealthy who had gone into exile. Surely at their return, the exiles were interested in getting back their ancestral lands- which had been given to the poor Jews who remained in the land (Jer. 39:10).  Ezra is now effectively driving them out from the community of what he thought was the true Israel. He threatens them with huge punishments if they didn't divorce their wives; "all his substance should be forfeited, and himself separated from the assembly " (Ezra 10:8). This was effectively railroading them into conformity, and dividing the community. In this case, Ezra was arguing for a hyper strict interpretation of God's law, far beyond what Moses had actually taught. Moses himself had married a Gentile then divorced and remarried another Gentile. Israelite soldiers could marry Gentile virgins they captured. There was no Mosaic consequence for marriage to a Gentile, nor do we see it ever punished in this way. Ezra in this case considered that there was a true, pure Israel and a corrupted Israel. The truth is that the returned exiles were not very pure at all. In Ezekiel 16, Ezekiel had rebuked the exiles in Babylon for being themselves impure and acting like their Gentile ancestors: "Thus says the Lord Yahweh to Jerusalem: Your birthplace is in the land of the Canaanite; the Amorite was your father, and your mother was a Hittite" (Ez. 16:3). The exiles were spiritually Canaanite, so their demand that the other Jews divorce their "Canaanite" wives was hypocritical. And the hypocrisy is crowned by the fact that 13 years later, Neh. 9:2 records how again the Jews had intermarried with local Gentiles: "The seed of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers". They lament that their fathers had sinned in this way too. Isaiah laments the deep hypocrisy amongst the exiles, casting out their brethren and refusing to worship with them because they were impure: "Your brothers who hate you, who cast you out for My name’s sake... who say, ‘Stand by yourself, don’t come near to me, for I am holier than you’" (Is. 66:5; 65:5). In that context, God had said that He dwelt in the hearts of those who trembled at His word (Is. 66:2), and that term is only used about those who trembled at God's word and divorced their wives (Ezra 9:4; 10:3). They didn't need to do this. They should have repented of their marriages, quit idolatry, and taught their wives and children Yahweh's way. But they were given false guilt by Ezra, and accepted it. But their trembling at the principles of God's word was such that God decided to dwell in them, not in the rebuilt temple. He so respected their humility, even though they had been spiritually abused by Ezra, and were pawns in the game of church politics- i.e. Ezra's desire to build a 'pure Israel' and excommunicate the rest. The tensions between the returned exiles, and the Jews who had remained in the land after the exile. So it is with the church of today. It is the spiritually abused little ones who are the ones God dwells in. Whilst according to Isaiah, the elders who abuse them have only condemnation to look forward to. We think of the widow who gave her last pennies to a corrupt priesthood in the Lord's time, and those today who are spiritually abused into giving their homes to corrupt church leaderships.

We note that Nehemiah thought that divorcing a Gentile wife meant being cleansed from foreigners (Neh. 13:30 "Thus I cleansed them from all foreigners", a comment made with no reference as to whether they were idolaters or not). This implies he thought interracial marriage was a defilement of itself. He considered that the Levites and priests who had done this had thus defiled the priesthood. But the law of Moses doesn't actually stipulate what should happen to a Levite who married a Gentile. All we know is that priests were prohibited from marrying prostitutes or divorced women (Lev. 21:7). In the restored temple, the sons of Zadok were to marry Israelites: "Neither shall they take for their wives a widow, nor her who is divorced; but they shall take virgins of the seed of the house of Israel" (Ez. 44:22). But Nehemiah applies this to all Priests and Levites, not just Zadokites, and simply ignores the fact that in no way had the Jews rebuilt the temple according to the scenario in Ezekiel 40-48. He was twisting scripture, seeking to extract a principle from a highly specific ruling. He wrongly assumed that the Jewish blood line was pure- when it never was. For intermarriage had been so common. The Jews came to teach that intermarriage was wrong because the blood line to Messiah must be kept pure. Quite ignoring all the previous Gentile intermarriage in the Jewish gene pool. The Lord's genealogy includes Gentiles and whores... how wrong they were.

Ezra 9:2 For they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy seed have mixed themselves with the peoples of the lands. Yes, the hand of the princes and rulers has been chief in this trespass-

Ezra appears to present the returning exiles as somewhat more holy than they were: "the holy seed". They had been idolaters in Babylon, for part of their condemnation had been to serve foreign gods in the land of their captivity, and Ezekiel had lamented the exiles' idolatry. Whilst on one hand Ezra presents as sincere, his argument appears to be that the Jews were somehow "holy seed" and intermarriage made them unholy. Israel's history was full of intermarriage, as can be seen from the Lord's genealogy. The seed [s.w.] of Abraham was to include many nations. The question was whether they were spiritually corrupted. But the language of "holy seed" veers towards wrongly condemning interracial marriage for the sake of it. Earlier, some had been told they were not of Israel because they couldn't prove their genealogy, their "seed": "They could not shew their father's house, and their seed, whether they were of Israel" (Ezra 2:59 AV). But the Israelite community was open to Egyptians joining them when they left Egypt and became a nation, indeed they are described as a "mixed multitude" in Ex. 12:38; and Paul's argument from Melchizedek is that lack of genealogy doesn't preclude from relationship with Yahweh. It seems Ezra is alluding to the prohibition for the High Priest to marry a Gentile: "a virgin of his own people shall he take as a wife. He shall not profane his seed [cp. "the holy seed"] among his people" (Lev. 21:14,15). But he is expanding this to apply to all the people. He certainly appears to be looking for an excuse to condemn a certain group of Jews to exclusion from the community. This is not how to use scripture... as the "scribe", he knew scripture better than the rest of the probably illiterate community, especially the Jews who had remained in the land after the exile. And he was abusing that, taking half a verse about the High Priest and applying it to them all, and then adding the sanction of losing all their possessions and being expelled from the community of God's people. That is quite without any Mosaic support. Ezra's mishandling of scripture clearly had an agenda, and it makes his subsequent 'grief' at the intermarriages appear as possibly theatrics. He appears to be shocked and surprised- when surely he was fully aware of the situation ahead of time. The idea of mixing seed is that the fruit resultant from it will not be legitimate. Hence the demand they abandon their children as well as the wives. But the Lord's genealogy shows how wrong is that thinking. He was the purest seed, but His genealogy involved prostitutes and Gentiles like Ruth and Rahab. This hatred of intermarriage was likely picked up from the Persians; for the Bible doesn't teach this idea of racial corruption or purity. "Israel" began as an ethnically mongrel race, with Ephraim and Manasseh the descendants of an Egyptian woman and plenty of other intermarriage. The Zoroastrian community and religion taught against any ethnic intermarriage, and that was perhaps one reason why the Jewish exile community didn't much intermarry with the Persians- because the Persians were against ethnic intermarriage.

It could even be argued from Is. 6:11-13 that the "Holy seed" were to be the remnant of Jews who remained in the land, after the others had been taken into exile or killed: "Until the cities are waste without inhabitant and houses without man and the land becomes utterly waste, and Yahweh has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. If there is a tenth left in it, that also will in turn be consumed: as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stump remains when they are felled; so the holy seed is its stump". But Ezra was arguing that the returned exiles were the holy seed, and the Jews who had remained in the land were not to be married nor accepted into "Israel" lest the holy seed of the exiles be contaminated. He has it all the wrong way around. Likewise Mal. 2:14 says that Yahweh was seeking to develop a holy seed, and the sexual behaviour of the exiles was hindering His efforts. The holiness of the seed was not automatic nor ethnic, as Ezra is supposing. Judah once were holy to Yahweh (Jer. 2:3), but not any more. 

The priests and rulers were guilty of the idol abominations mentioned in :1. This is the picture we have in Isaiah, of the exiles committing idolatry in their rebuilt temple and yet condemning their brothers.

These relationships and children are defined as being part of mixing with the abominations of the peoples (:1). And "abominations" always refers to idol worship. So it could be that the relationships with "their daughters" were a result of sleeping with cult prostitutes and having children thereby. There was therefore far more to what happened than simply marrying out of the faith. To 'take daughters for themselves' may not mean marriage itself, but could refer to the kind of cultic relationships which went along with idol worship at the shrines. This is why the separation from these women with whom they had had children (Ezra 10:3) would not then be quite the same as breaking up marriage and full blown family life. Israel are only specifically called "the holy seed" in Is. 6:13, where the idea was that after their experience of judgment, those who survived would be a "holy seed" who would shoot forth the Messianic "Branch" from the decaying stump of the house of David. But now the "holy seed" had corrupted themselves; for they were the minority preserved from judgment, and now they had corrupted their holiness. So the possibilities of the reestablishment of the Kingdom of God in Israel which the prophets were full of... was now precluded. They failed to see themselves and their offspring as anything so "holy" to Yahweh. This is the root of all sin- a failure to appreciate our holy standing in His eyes, our sanctification in Christ.

Ezra 9:3 When I heard this thing, I tore my garment and my robe, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down confounded-

Ezra's actions betray genuinely deep surprise and personal grief. Surprise and grief are the themes of other incidents when a man tears his robes: Reuben rent his clothes on not finding Joseph (Gen. 37:29); Jacob rent his ‘garments’ on seeing Joseph’s coat (Gen. 37:34); Joseph’s brethren rent their clothes when the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack (Gen. 44:13): Joshua rent his clothes after the defeat at Ai (Josh. 7:6); Job rent his mantle on hearing of his children’s death (Job 1:20), and his friends rent each one his mantle when they saw his shocking state (Job 2:12). These were all signs of deep grief and surprise. We of course wonder whether the surprise element was somehow 'put on' by Ezra. For he surely knew the idolatrous state of things amongst the exiles. "Confounded" is the same word translated 'destroyed / desolated' (Dan. 9:27; 11:31). His heart was truly broken by others' failures. And that surely must be read positively, for it reflects his passion for God's glory in His people. Otherwise he would have just focused on his own personal spirituality. Here we have a challenge to 'out of church' believers, who say they focus on their own faith, and lament the apostacy of others by simply keeping away from others. To have no heart for people, not shedding a tear for others' spiritual state... is not the spirit of our Lord.

The temple still lay “waste” (Hag. 1:4,9) just as it had lain “desolate” [s.w. Jer. 33:10,12] after the Babylonian destruction. The ‘restoration’ was in fact not really a restoration at all, in God’s eyes. Thus Ezra sat down desolate [s.w. "confounded"] at the news of Judah’s apostasy in having children by the surrounding women; using the very same word as frequently used to describe the ‘desolate’ / 'confounded' Jerusalem that was to be rebuilt (Ezra 9:3 cp. Is. 49:8,19; 54:3; 61:4). He tore his priestly garment (Ezra 9:3), as if he realized that all Ezekiel’s prophesies about those priestly garments now couldn’t come true (s.w. Ez. 42:14; 44:17,19). Is. 58:12,13 prophesied that the acceptable rebuilding of Zion was dependent upon Judah keeping the Sabbath acceptably; and yet Nehemiah’s record makes clear their tragic abuse of the Sabbath at the time of the restoration; and this therefore meant that the rebuilding of the temple and city were not going to fulfill the Messianic prophecies about them which existed.

The Lord would have meditated upon the way righteous men had taken upon themselves the sins of their people. Thus Jeremiah speaks as if he has committed Israel's sins; Ezra rends his clothes and plucks off his hair, as if he has married out of the Faith (Ezra 9:3 cp. Neh. 13:25; the Lord received the same sinner's treatment, Is. 50:6). Moses' prayer for God to relent and let him enter the land was only rejected for the sake of his association with Israel's sins (Dt. 3:26).

Ezra 9:4 Then were assembled to me all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had been carried away; and I sat confounded until the evening offering- See on :7. The double reference in Is. 66:1-5 to trembling at Yahweh’s word is a definite prediction of the situation in Ezra 9:4; 10:3, where the same rare Hebrew word is used regarding how those of the exiles who repented for their marriage out of the Faith trembled before the word in repentance. Then, at that point, the Kingdom blessings could have been brought about, as described in the rest of Is. 66. But again, there was no staying power in their repentance. By Nehemiah’s time, and by Malachi’s time even after his, marriage out of the Faith was still their weakness.  

I have argued on Is. 56:4 that actually the better response would have been not to divorce those women, but to lead them into covenant with Israel's God. For Isaiah 56 offers a place amongst God's people to Gentiles and eunuchs, those previously excluded. So these who trembled at God's word responded to the word, but in a less than ideal way. Still God was thrilled with them.

As discussed on Ezra 10:3, the trembling at God's words was largely from false guilt. But these who had been spiritually abused are those in whom Yahweh would dwell, even if they had been given a very distorted picture of God's word; and their hypocritical leaders would be condemned (Is. 66:1-5).

Ezra 9:5 At the evening offering I arose up from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn; and I fell on my knees, and spread out my hands to Yahweh my God- The "humiliation" may refer to fasting. He felt so identified with his sinful people. But I discussed on :2 and elsewhere how Ezra may have had an agenda- to excommunicate the Jews who were in the land, along with the exiles he thought were spiritually substandard, and present his group of returned exiles as the one true Israel. In this case, it's possible that his behaviour here was at least partly theatrics. Making a big expression of shock and horror at something he surely knew was happening before he encountered it. Unfortunately, the language of praying with spread out hands and on the knees is exactly that of Solomon at the dedication of the temple God never wanted and later cursed (1 Kings 8:54); and Solomon was not sincere, and was also guilty of theatrics. But this is Ezra's memoir, he is the author, and he draws us in to this question of to what degree was he sincere. He was, to an extent. But then there was theatricism. We likewise have to look back and search our motives, for human motivation is so often mixed.

"Rose up / arose" is a word used often of the 'rising up' of the exiles to rebuild Jerusalem (Ezra 1:5; 3:2; 9:5; Neh. 2:18; 3:1). This was a fulfilment of the command to "Arise... Jerusalem!" (Is. 51:17; 52:2; 61:4). Perhaps Ezra was motivated by these prophecies to now "arise", hoping that somehow his people would still be raised up. But this 'arising' was to be associated with the dawning of Zion's light in the form of Yahweh's glory literally dwelling over Zion (Is. 60:1). This didn't happen at the time, because the appearance of 'arising' by the exiles was only external and wasn't matched by a spiritual revival. Ezra was driven to appeal to God directly and solely from himself with his priestly garments now in ruins. I have noted earlier that his focus upon teaching the law of Moses was rather missing the point- that the old covenant had been broken by Judah, and they could only throw themselves upon the grace of the new covenant.

Ezra 9:6 and I said, My God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to You, my God; for our iniquities have increased over our head, and our guiltiness has grown up to the heavens- The description of Ezekiel's Temple was to be given to the captives in Babylon by Ezekiel, to lead them to repentance and to assure them of what could be if they repented. Then when the invitation to leave Babylon and return came in the time of Ezra, they ought to have been motivated to return to the land and build the temple which Ezekiel had explained to them. But sadly most of them weren’t very deeply motivated at all; they wanted to build a temple, but not to the extent Ezekiel had outlined. Consider in this light Ez. 43:10,11: “Thou son of man, shew the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities: and let them measure the pattern. And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, shew them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out thereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them”. Then, when the temple was built, they were to be obedient in all the ways in which they hadn’t been obedient in the past, with the result that they were now sitting in captivity (Ez. 44:24). This was the tragedy felt by Ezra, when he realized the exiles were not living as they should be: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God; for our iniquities are increased” (Ezra 9:6). Israel would only be able to build the temple properly if they were “ashamed of their iniquities” (Ez. 43:10). And Ezra knew they weren’t. And thus he sought to take upon himself that shame, believing that God would accept his shame on behalf of the people. Note in passing how he speaks of blushing before God. You only blush in someone’s presence. And this was how close and real Ezra felt his God to be.  Perhaps this repentance of a remnant explains why in fact the record of Ezekiel's temple was written down at all- for Ez. 43:11 seems to say that it would be written down if Judah were ashamed of their sins. Ezekiel's opening chapters record him being forewarned by God that they would not generally be responsive to his ministry; and yet some were, like Ezra, and maybe this was eagerly seized upon by God as the basis for allowing the writing down and preservation of the specifications we have in Ez. 40-48.

Isaiah 45 is as clear a prophecy as any could wish. God categorically stated that Cyrus would be raised up by Him in order to release the captives in Babylon, and to enable the building of Jerusalem (Is. 45:12); all because God had formed the land [AV “earth”] of Israel to be inhabited and not to be left without His people dwelling upon it. And this happened; the captives were released (although most preferred to stay put in Babylon), and the building of Jerusalem was enabled (although the work was not done very enthusiastically by Judah, and they preferred to build their own houses rather than Yahweh’s). But the prophecy goes on in Is. 45:13-17: “I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the LORD of hosts. Thus saith the LORD, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains they shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no God... They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them: they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols. But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end”. But the Egyptians and Ethiopians didn’t come and fall down before Judah, as the Queen of Sheba had before Solomon. Nor did they accept Yahweh as the only God, and ditch their idols. Instead, the returned Jews worshipped the idols of Egypt, and married their women (Ezra 9:1). And thus Israel were ashamed and confounded in the future. The same Hebrew words for “ashamed [and] confounded” occur in Ezra 9:6, where as a result of Ezra realizing that Judah had married the local women and broken covenant with Yahweh, he admits: “I am ashamed and blush [s.w. ‘confounded’] to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased....”. The words of Is. 45 could have had their fulfilment in the time of Cyrus; the surrounding nations could have come and worshipped before Judah, and the whole earth quit their idols and look unto Yahweh as a just God and a saviour. But Judah would not. Judah in the new temple would not “defile” Yahweh’s Name any more (Ez. 43:7,8); but they were lazy to keep the uncleanness laws, they did defile Yahweh by touching dead bodied and then offering the sacrifices (Hag. 2:13,14 s.w.), just as Israel previously had been defiled by touching the dead bodies of their kings and then offering sacrifices (Ez. 43:7); but now, Judah thought they were above God’s law, and therefore did exactly the same things which had caused the temple to be destroyed in the first place. The promise that Yahweh would dwell in the new temple was conditional on them not touching dead bodies (Ez. 43:9); but Hag. 2:13 makes it apparent that they did this very thing at the time of the restoration. 

The same phrase translated "ashamed and blush / be confounded" is used of condemnation (Is. 45:16; Ps. 35:4). Ezra felt condemned with the sinners, even though marriage to a Gentile is not necessarily going to bring condemnation. But he felt it did, and wrong as he was, he lived what he believed and believed what he lived. He had integrity, despite ignoring much of God's word. Ezra’s expression of shame and confusion is that of Ez. 36:32: "Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel". The Jews, by contrast, "were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush" (Jer. 6:15; 8:12).

The word "trespass" is that used in Lev. 4:3 concerning the case where a priest trespassed and brought guilt on the people. The path forward in that case was for sacrifice to be offered. No talk of excommunication or confiscation of his property. But Ezra never asks the repentant Jews to offer sacrifice to cover their sins... if a leader of the people sinned, and there were leaders who had married Gentiles, the law required a special offering. But there are no such offerings, just the "works" of divorce. Quite possibly because Ezra failed to see in the blood of the sacrifices any prophecy of the Lord's blood.

Ezra 9:7 Since the days of our fathers we have been exceeding guilty to this day; and for our iniquities we, our kings and our priests, have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder and to confusion of face, as it is this day- The sins of those who returned are styled "the transgression of those that had been carried away" (Ezra 9:4). Yet those who returned to the land weren't mainly the generation who had been carried away. The intended confusion is surely to suggest that those who returned committed the same sins as had led Judah into captivity a generation earlier. And Ezra comments on this fact here in his subsequent prayer. He feels shame of face just as his people did.

Ezra 9:8 Now for a little moment grace has been shown from Yahweh our God, to leave us a remnant to escape- Perhaps he saw the "little moment" as the time between the exiles leaving Babylon and Babylon's much threatened judgment and obliteration. See on :13. Ezra saw that “little moment" or "space” as a time when they received grace; he understood the prophecy of the figs in Jer. 24, that it was only through the captivity and the fact God had graciously not destroyed them but rather preserved them there, that there was the opportunity for a remnant to re-establish the Kingdom. What may appear to some as forsaking is in fact God’s grace to us, when spiritually discerned- whether it be deep within our own lives, or in the state of affairs upon this planet. Yet it should be noted that the prophecy of Jer. 24:6,7 about the good figs seems not to have come true at the restoration- although it could potentially have done so.

And to give us a nail in His holy place- I submit that the Messianic prophecies of the restoration prophets could have had their fulfilment in Joshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel, or some other Messianic figure at that time. Everything was made possible to enable this- Joshua, who couldn’t prove his Levitical genealogy, was given “a place of access” amongst the priesthood, those who “stood” before the Lord (Zech. 3:7 RV). Ezra thanked God that they had returned and that they had “a nail in his holy place” (Ezra 9:8), a reference surely to a Messiah figure whom he felt to be among them, the “nail in a sure place” of Is. 22:23. According to Mt. 1:12 and Lk. 3:27, Zerubbabel was the Prince of Judah, and the rightful heir to David’s throne. But due to his weakness, the fulfilment was deferred to Jesus.

The sense of the Hebrew seems to be as GNB "you have been gracious to us and have let some of us escape from slavery and live in safety in this holy place". LXX "to give us an establishment in the place of his sanctuary". Ezra's focus was on the return of the people to the temple, to the holy place; whereas clearly enough, the desire of the majority was to get land for their own farms and houses outside of Jerusalem.

That our God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little reviving in our bondage- Blindness had been their punishment for not wanting to see; and despite little evidence that they did want to see, God was trying to open their eyes all the same, and to give them revival, new life, in bondage. For they were still in bondage to the Persians and were not independent of them. But they had spurned all that huge grace.

Ezra feels that the exiles have been given a revival in their bondage. Perhaps he felt the spirit of life had been breathed into the dead bones of the exiles (Ez. 37:5-10); the prayer of the exiles "Will You not revive us again?" (Ps. 85:16) had been heard. God had been willing to "revive the spirit of the humble" amongst the exiles (Is. 57:15). Man can be given the life of the Spirit, but then preclude the working of the Spirit and quench that life. The Galatians began in the Spirit, but turned to the flesh.

The gift of light from God meant His face shining, which was exactly what the Psalms of exile continually beg for- for God to make His face to shine upon His people and restore them. Ezra clearly felt that these prayers had been answered, but intermarriage had as it were wasted the answer. Just as we can waste the gifts of spiritual strength. "Arise, shine, for your light is come" (Is. 60:1) had had a potential fulfilment. But their worldliness had stopped it. Daniel had prayed for God's face to shine (Dan. 9:17), and it had done.

Ezra repeatedly speaks of the returned exiles as "the remnant" (:8,13,14,15). This is the classic language of the religious cult- we are the remnant, those alone who are faithful, with the majority of God's people unfaithful. But the remnant were to be those who repented and accepted the new covenant (Am. 5:15; Mic. 7:18; Jer. 23:3; 31:7)- and the returned exile community, didn't do this. Indeed, "the remnant of Judah" is a term multiple times used in Jeremiah of the community of Jews who remained in the land after the exile. But Jeremiah is at pains to reapply this term to the returned exiles. He was seeking to redefine "the remnant" as the returned exiles. And he uses his public prayer as an opportunity to do this. This is not to say that Ezra's prayer was totally insincere. This is his memoir, and he is drawing us in to the consideration of how sincere his prayer had been. Parts of it were, but there were unspiritual elements within it.

Ezra 9:9 For we are bondservants; yet our God has not forsaken us in our bondage- Although the Apocryphal book of Baruch isn’t inspired, it gives a significant window into the mindset of the exiles in Babylon. Baruch 1:10 mentions how the attitude was that the majority wanted to send funds to support the ‘good work’ going on in Judah- but didn’t want to return there themselves. Like the book of Esther, this indicates that the exiles had soon quit languishing by the rivers of Babylon, and had quickly acquired wealth and some degree of prosperity. Inspired prophecies had warned them of the fall of Babylon, and their need to flee out of it and return to Judah. And yet Baruch 1:12 records the exiles praying “that we may live long under the protective shadow of [the] king of Babylon”. This is in sad contrast to Daniel’s prophecies that the sheltering tree of Babylon was to be cut down! There ought to have been an urgency about the need to flee from Babylon. Zech. 2:10 speaks of the need to "flee" and "escape"- the language of crisis. And the call "Ho!" means quite literally "Hey!!". The urgency to flee was spiritual rather than physical- for there's no evidence that when Babylon fell to the Persians, the Jews were punished. Indeed they appear [from Esther] to have prospered even more. Hence the urgent appeal was to flee from the spiritual crisis which they faced in Babylon. And yet they didn't perceive the danger, just as so many today don't. For the call to leave Babylon is applied in New Testament passages like 2 Cor. 6 to our call to leave the world in which we live. The urgency of 'fleeing' from Babylon was understood by Nehemiah, when he referred to those who had returned to the land as those who has "escaped" from Babylon (Neh. 1:2)- even though they had returned with every blessing from the authorities. He perceived as few did the vital danger of remaining in the soft life of Babylon. Ezra likewise had referred to the Jews in Babylon as those "in bondage... bondmen" (Ezra 9:9)- when historical records, as well as the book of Esther and the fact Nehemiah the Jew was the king's cupbearer, show that the Jews were very far from being servants in Babylonian society. Yet Ezra perceived the spiritual poverty and servanthood of remaining in that affluent society.

But has extended loving kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins- "To give us a reviving" uses the same word for "put" when we read of God putting a new heart and spirit in His revived people if they entered the new covenant at the restoration: “And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you” (Ez. 36:27-29). They revived the stones out of the heaps (Neh. 4:2). A new spirit was potentially given to them, God put in the heart of men like Nehemiah to revive the work (Neh. 2:12 s.w.). But this didn’t force them to be obedient. They chose not to be.

Ezekiel 37 had its primary fulfilment in the return under Ezra. Then, Israel was given “a quickening” (Ezra 9:9 LXX), in fulfilment of how the dry bones in captivity were revived. At that time, Judah could have fully revived. But most of them chose to stay in Babylon. If there had been a full revival, then the events of Ezekiel 38 and 39 would have taken place. It has been suggested that there was a  primary fulfilment of Ezekiel 38/9 in an unrecorded invasion of the land at the time of the restoration. However, historical evidence for this is severely lacking . And yet the Scythian tribes such as Magog, Gomer, Meshech, Tubal etc. are all recorded as being the scourge of the Middle East at that time. They were marauding into more prosperous areas “to take a spoil”, especially “cattle and goods”, at around Ezekiel’s time. They could so easily have turned their attentions toward Israel. That invasion could have happened; but it didn’t.  But because Israel were not faithful the temple was not built properly, and therefore the Ezekiel 38 invasion didn’t happen, and therefore Yahweh’s intervention and establishment of His Kingdom as described in Ezekiel 39 didn’t occur.

And to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem- Zech. 2:4 had foretold that “Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein”, seeing that Yahweh Himself would be as a wall of fire around her to protect her from her adversaries (Ezra had recognized this promise, that God would be a wall to them- Ezra 9:9). Note how this prophecy is introduced by an Angel with a measuring reed measuring out the rebuilt Zion (Zech. 2:1), just as we have in Ezekiel 40. But Judah disbelieved the promise of a Divine wall of fire, and insisted on building a physical wall to protect them; and the record in Nehemiah has plenty of reference to their setting up of bars and gates in their fear (Neh. 3:3,6,13-15). By doing so they disallowed the fulfilment of Ezekiel 38:11, and thereby precluded what was prophesied as subsequently following. If they had trusted Him and paid their tithes, their cattle would have multiplied, and the Scythian tribes would have come down to seek to take them, as Ezekiel 38:12,13 foretold. But as it happened, their cattle were diseased and their agriculture not blessed because of their dilatory attention to Yahweh’s house that lay waste (Haggai 1:11). So therefore there was no invasion, and no victory against the nations, and no Kingdom established at that time. 

The wall may refer to the protection of the Persian empire whilst the temple was rebuilt. The constant mention of being still in servitude to Babylon / Persia may have been politically motivated. Ezra, after all, was funded by Persia and was also tasked with extending Persian civil law in Judah. He knew his prayer was going to be reported back to his Persian superiors. I have earlier discussed whether Ezra was in fact right to accept Persian support for his spiritual ministry in return for enforcing their political control over Judah. His description [in a prayer to God!] of the Persians as the "wall" of Jerusalem seems politically motivated. Had they broken free of Persian control, Yahweh would have been a wall of fire to Jerusalem.


Ezra 9:10 Now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken Your commandments- Again we note Ezra's total identity with his sinful people. This is proof enough that there is no "guilt by association" as believed by so many groups. Rather there is to be the very opposite- freewill association of ourselves with the guilt of sinners, that we might thereby appeal to them and intercede for them. And this was in fact the very basis of our redemption through the work of the Lord Jesus.

Ezra 9:11 which You have commanded by Your servants the prophets saying, ‘The land, to which you go to possess it, is an unclean land through the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands, through their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their filthiness-

Ezra appears to make a quotation ["Saying..."]. But actually he is conflating various words from various parts of the law of Moses. This kind of approach gets dangerously close to making our interpretation equal to God's word and law.

The people were warned that the temple had been destroyed because of their previous “abominations”, and that the rebuilt temple was not to feature any such abominations (Ez. 43:8; 44:6,7,13). “let it suffice you of your abominations” they were told- and were then told not to allow the uncircumcised into the temple, as they had been doing (Ez. 44:6,9). This sounds as if the prophecy of Ezekiel was more command than prediction- to those of his own day. But they returned, and committed the abominations [s.w.] of the Gentiles (Ezra 9:1,11,14) and married their daughters; to the extent that Malachi commented upon this: “Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination [s.w.] is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god” (Mal. 2:11).

Ezra 9:12 Now therefore don’t give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters to your sons, nor seek their peace or their prosperity forever; that you may be strong, and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever’- This command directly addressed the human tendency to think that 'it won't happen to me / my family'. The "abominations" of the land (:11) were idolatry. Intermarriage was seen as inevitably involving the people in idolatry, as we saw in :2,3. The implication is that marriage is the most intimate of human relationships, and the spiritually weaker party will almost inevitably bring down the spiritually stronger party to their level. Solomon is the parade example. But it seems the lesson is never learnt- because there is an inbuilt tendency in human nature to take the easiest way. The argument was that they should not "seek their peace or their prosperity forever" because that phrase is found in Dt. 23:7 about Moabite and Ammonite males. But the case of Ruth the Moabite shows this was not to be applied to all Moabites. Ezra seems hyper eager to find a justification for making the Jews divorce local women whom they had married (:2). And to then threaten those who didn't do so with exclusion from the Jewish community and total confiscation of all their property. This was extreme railroading. And it didn't work because 13 years later in Nehemiah there was still the problem of alien marriage.

Ezra 9:13 After all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, since You, our God, has punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and has given us such a remnant-

Ezra's argument is that Judah had previously sinned in the matter of marriage; he calls it their "evil deeds" and "great guilt". But the extensive prophetic material which is so critical of Judah never mentions intermarriage as Judah's sin; rather was it the sin of idolatry. Ezra is conflating idolatry with intermarriage. Whilst the two are related, as Deuteronomy warned, intermarriage of itself is not the sin. And the reference to related "abominations" or idolatry is made only in :1. The reasoning throughout Ezra 9,10 and later in Nehemiah only mentions intermarriage as the great sin. We note Ezra is using his prayer to God as an opportunity to make these 'political' points. Perhaps in his memoir he is reflecting how sincere were the words of his recorded prayer of long ago...

Ezra said that God had punished them less than their iniquities deserved, somehow alluding to the prophecy of Is. 40:2, which said that at the time of Zion’s restoration, God would admit to having punished her “double for all her sins”. Yahweh in His love and pity felt that He had punished them twice as much as they deserved; but Ezra realized that in reality it was less than what they deserved. See on :8.

There are evident similarities between the vocabulary and style of Zechariah, Job and the prophets of the restoration. Thus both Job and Zechariah refer to the ideas of the court of Heaven, "the satan" etc. My suggestion is that Job was rewritten during the exile, hence the many points of contact between Job and Isaiah's prophecies about the restoration. When we read that Job has suffered less than his iniquities deserve (Job 11:6), this is the very term used to describe Israel's sufferings in Babylon (Ezra 9:13). Job, "the servant of the Lord", is being set up as Israel, just as that same term is used about Israel in Babylon throughout the latter part of Isaiah. Job's mockery by the Arabian friends perhaps parallels the Samaritan and Babylonian mockery of Judah; his loss of children is very much the tragedy of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians which Lamentations focuses upon. And Job's final revival and restoration after repentance would therefore speak of the blessed situation which Judah could have had at their return to the land. Job's response to the words of God and Elihu would then speak of Judah's intended repentance as a result of God's word spoken to them by prophets like Haggai and Zechariah. There are many connections between Job and the latter parts of Isaiah which speak about the restoration.

 

Ezra 9:14 shall we again break Your commandments, and join in affinity with the peoples that do these abominations? Wouldn’t You be angry with us until You had consumed us, so that there should be no remnant, nor any to escape?- The covenant was not to be broken; the temple had been destroyed before because of breaking covenant with Yahweh (Ez. 44:7). But Judah broke covenant [s.w.] with Yahweh at the time of the restoration by marrying Gentiles and worshipping their gods (Ezra 9:1,14). They were themselves the remnant, and Ezra recognizes that now they too deserved to be destroyed, leaving God as it were with no Israel (:15). His spiritual mind however might have been driven to reason further, and perceive that indeed Israel would no longer be Yahweh's people- and therefore He would seek another people, on a different covenant basis. And that in fact was what the restoration prophets had been saying, although Ezra's obsession with the old covenant and teaching it had rather blinded him to that.

The anger of God would be with the idolatry which could well arise from intermarriage, not with the intermarriage itself: "Your daughter you shall not give to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son. For he will turn away your son from following me to serve other gods; so the anger of Yahweh would be kindled against you and He would destroy you quickly" (Dt. 7:3,4). "Wouldn't You be angry...?" is Ezra's imagination of God's response. I have argued elsewhere that the intermarriage itself wouldn't have caused God's wrath. This is Ezra putting words in God's mouth. And as discussed on Ezra 10:1, although his intercession was modelled upon the prayers of Moses and Daniel before him, there was zero Divine response to him. Unlike with Moses and Daniel. He here supplies what he thinks God's response would be. And he had it wrong. Yahweh would not fry people alive for ethnic intermarriage of itself.

Ezra 9:15 Yahweh, the God of Israel, You are righteous- The repeated emphasis on "Israel" (:6) may be because Ezra was redefining "Israel" as those faithful to his particular strict interpretation of God's law. True confession of sin always involves this recognition that God is right.

For we are left a remnant that has escaped, as it is this day. Behold, we are before You in our guiltiness-

"Before You" may mean he felt that they were standing already at God's judgment seat. But he may also simply refer to the fact he was praying "before the house of God’"(Ezra 10:2). In which case, he is assuming God was present and dwelling there. Despite Isaiah's clear statement that Yahweh did not dwell in the house built by the exiles, but rather in the hearts of humble individuals. The argument is that despite their sin, they were "before You", but he goes on to immediately say that "we cannot remain before You because of this". That is, Ezra argues that Yahweh was imminently going to destroy His people because some had married "out". But that is an unreasonable position. God would not destroy His people for that reason, when He has tolerated marriage to Gentiles throughout the history of His people. Ezra seems to be setting up a straw man, and then demanding radical and immediate measures to correct it lest all Israel be destroyed permanently from "before" God. This is a classic case of creating a crisis and then using it to justify quick and decisive action- when in fact the crisis has been created and such actions are politically motivated. God has protested that Israel shall always be "before" Him because of His huge love and grace for them: "Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me" (Is. 49:16). Jer. 31:36 is clearest: "If these ordinances [of sun and moon] depart from before Me, says Yahweh, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever". Ezra's [false] argument was that Israel were about to be destroyed, and his intercession and their immediate repentance through forced divorce were the only factors that would save the situation. I suggest that he was looking for an excuse to get exclude some from the community of "Israel". He was overlooking the repeated comfort in the recent prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, that God's love for His people was eternal: "The mountains may depart, and the hills be removed; but My loving kindness shall not depart from you, neither shall My covenant of peace be removed, says Yahweh who has mercy on you" (Is. 54:10). "Don’t you be afraid, O Jacob My servant, says Yahweh; for I am with you: for although I will make a full end of all the nations where I have driven you, I will not make a full end of you" (Jer. 46:28).

We must soberly ‘think of ourselves’ as someone who has something to contribute to the rest of the body, even if first of all we are not sure what it is (Rom. 15:3-8). We feel their weaknesses as if they are our own. Self interest must die; their wellbeing becomes all consuming. This is why men like Daniel and Nehemiah could feel that “we have sinned...”- not ‘they have sinned’. Ezra said that because we have sinned, we cannot lift up ourselves before Yahweh. And he cast himself down before Yahweh in demonstration of how much he was with his people in this (Ezra 9:15; 10:1)!

For we cannot remain before You because of this- Is. 66:22 and Ez. 44:15 use the same word: “But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me, and they shall stand before me [s.w. “remain before You”] to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord GOD”. But Ezra had to confess, using these very words of Isaiah and Ezekiel which he would have been familiar with, that they could not remain before Yahweh. They hadn’t lived the Kingdom life, and therefore the Kingdom prophecies could not come true in them. It makes a profitable exercise to consider all the times that Ezra and Nehemiah allude to the words of Isaiah and Ezekiel. It must have been heartbreaking for them to see the possibility of fulfilment within their grasp, and yet to know that their people didn’t see the wonder of it all.

"Remain before You" effectively means 'we cannot any longer be your people'. As discussed on :14,  Ezra recognizes that now they too deserved to be destroyed, leaving God as it were with no Israel. His spiritual mind however might have been driven to reason further, and perceive that indeed Israel would no longer be Yahweh's people- and therefore He would seek another people, on a different covenant basis. And that in fact was what the restoration prophets had been saying, although Ezra's obsession with the old covenant and teaching it had rather blinded him to that.

"Remain" is 'stand'. But the truth is that all men sin, including Ezra, and we only  stand before God by grace: "If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" (Ps. 130:3). Ezra should have sought forgiveness by grace through faith, rather than thinking that divorce would resolve things with God.