Leaving Behind

Ezra 9-10 

Welcome! Today we will look at the last two chapters of the book of Ezra. As a brief review, Ezra starts with the decree of Cyrus, after 50 or 70 years of exile (depending on from where you start counting), that allowed the Israelites to go back to Jerusalem. We saw how they overcame persecution and trials to rebuild the temple, and how, after a period of about 80 years after the decree of Cyrus, Ezra came with a group of exiles to Jerusalem to serve as high priest at the rebuilt Temple. Once there, they sacrificed burnt offerings at the Temple to the Lord, thankful beyond words for how the Lord had protected them (and all of the valuable artifacts for the Temple they had carried) and, more fundamentally, for how the Lord had given the Israelite people back what had been lost due to the forsaking of God by their ancestors some 150 years prior.

After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, "The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness." – Ezra 9:1-2


So Ezra had been in Jerusalem for a short time, and then he received this announcement. As we will soon see, there is no question that this announcement hit him like the proverbial ton of bricks. Why? Because what was being described was, no shades of gray about it, just plain sin. From the time of Moses, God had instituted clear commands to the Israelites not to take for themselves foreign wives. In Deuteronomy 7, for example, there are instructions stating that when the Lord brings the Israelites into the Promised Land and helps them establish their territory, they are to do the following:

Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods, and the Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. Deut. 7:3-5

And yet, what the Israelites had been told not to do is exactly what they did, and it led to the days of corruption in Judges as well as the days of corruption that led to the destruction of the Temple built by Solomon. It had led to the 70 years of exile that these Israelites had finally returned from. In Deut. 7:1, there is another list of the foreign nations, similar to the list in Ezra 9:1. In fact, they have many of the same names, even though it is centuries and centuries later!

The Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and Amorites are all mentioned in Deut. 7:1. Quite literally, nothing has changed. And notice what it says in the end of Ezra 9:2: The leaders and officials have “led the way.” This too is nothing new; the kings of Israel and Judah were also leaders in wickedness prior to the destruction of the Temple.

Now, notice the reason for this ban on marrying foreign wives or husbands: It is that they will lead them away from God. I want to point out something very important here: The reason for this ban has nothing to do with race. It only has to do with faith. Consider the example of Ruth, a non-Israelite who converted and was welcomed as part of the Israelite people.

I know you all know this, but it is good to say it anyway. Racism has no place in faith, whether we are talking about the people before Christ who believed, as it says in Hebrews 11, by faith, people who hoped in the promise of what was to come, or whether we are talking about people who came after Christ.

I mention this as a bit of an aside, but in Numbers 12, we have the incident where Moses marries a Cushite wife. Cush was part of Africa, east of Egypt, and the Cushites were dark-skinned. This is why we have the saying in Jeremiah 13:23, Can the Ethiopian (literally Cushite) change his skin? Miriam and Aaron opposed Moses for marrying this woman, who it would seem converted to the faith of Moses, and the result was that God spoke, defending Moses, and then Miriam immediately became leprous – as it says, white like snow. Maybe this is a stretch, but I have wondered if God made Miriam white like snow as a kind of her response to thinking that Moses’ Cushite wife was not white-skinned enough!

In the New Testament, we have the experience of the Ethiopian eunuch coming to faith, and we have verses like these:

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. – I Cor. 12:12-13

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. – Gal. 3:26-28

Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. – Col. 3:11

Again, I know you know that there is no place for racism in the household of faith, but it is good to declare it, and it is good to see that this was true in the Old Testament as well. I cannot tell you how important these verses about neither Jew nor Greek were to me early in my Christian life. As a Jew, it was not clear at first to me who I was allowed to marry. But the answer is so clear in these verses – the issue is one of faith, none other.

And faith is the issue in Ezra as well. Notice the end of the second verse:
And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness." – Ezra 9:2b

Sadly, there are churches too where the leaders lead not in godly character, but in unfaithfulness as well. Synagogue leaders with wives who worshiped other gods! How did Ezra respond?

When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice. Then, at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my self-abasement, with my tunic and cloak torn, and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God and prayed: – Ezra 9:3-6a

Tearing one’s clothes and pulling one’s hair were then culturally normal expressions of great grief. I think there is a lesson here in that Ezra felt grief, as opposed to anger. Why do you think this was? Why didn’t Ezra say and think, “You numbskulls! What in the world were you thinking! Don’t you know why our forefathers ended up in captivity? Don’t you know why the great Temple was destroyed? Don’t you know why God’s Holy Spirit left? How can you be so stupid?” Why, instead, is Ezra grieving?

I believe Ezra is not thinking about himself or his relationship to these people over which he has responsibility. Instead, he is thinking about these people’s relationship with God. How weak, how shallow this relationship must be! Not just those who have actually taken foreign wives, but those others who winked and nodded at the behavior and didn’t do or say anything.

I love the words “then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me.” What does it mean to tremble at the words of God? It means you live by them, that you see them as a precious treasure beyond all earthly treasures. People who tremble at the words of God do not take foreign wives who worship idols. Such a thought is abhorrent to them.

Let’s now look at Ezra’s prayer, on his knees, with his hands spread out to the Lord:

"O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to You, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our forefathers until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings, as it is today. – Ezra 9:6b-7

"But now, for a brief moment, the Lord our God has been gracious in leaving us a remnant and giving us a firm place in his sanctuary, and so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our bondage. Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem. – Ezra 9:8-9

"But now, O our God, what can we say after this? For we have disregarded the commands You gave through your servants the prophets when You said: 'The land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the corruption of its peoples. By their detestable practices they have filled it with their impurity from one end to the other. Therefore, do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them at any time, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it to your children as an everlasting inheritance.' – Ezra 9:10-12

"What has happened to us is a result of our evil deeds and our great guilt, and yet, our God, You have punished us less than our sins have deserved and have given us a remnant like this. Shall we again break Your commands and intermarry with the peoples who commit such detestable practices? Would You not be angry enough with us to destroy us, leaving us no remnant or survivor? O Lord, God of Israel, You are righteous! We are left this day as a remnant. Here we are before You in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in Your presence." – Ezra 9:13-15

I find this one of the most powerful, most beautiful prayers in the entire Bible. But it is not fun and exciting. It is not the prayer of a dreamer, full of hope, but the prayer of one who weeps for the sad state of his people. One commentator noted that if someone were to write a companion book to the Prayer of Jabez called the Prayer of Ezra, it would not sell very well.

This prayer is all about repentance. I find it striking how Ezra doesn’t even once say “they” in this prayer, but instead, over and over, says “we.” Now Ezra himself did not take a foreign wife. So why does he do this? It is because he took on the role of high priest in this prayer. This is the primary role, the primary purpose, of a high priest. As described in Leviticus 16, the job of the high priest was to make atonement for his people. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, he was the one who would go into the Holy of Holies and sacrifice an animal in atonement for the sins of his people.

I am reminded of two other high priests. The first could not be more different from Ezra. His name was Caiaphas. He had Jesus arrested and then personally questioned Jesus, after first overseeing the presentation of a parade of false witnesses against Him, demanding to know if Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, as recorded in Matthew 26. This high priest also tore his robes, but not over the sins of his people, which were more extreme than any sins we see here in Ezra.

Instead, he tore his robes after Jesus admitted being the Messiah and said he would see Him sitting at the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven. Perhaps no high priest has ever more utterly failed in his ordained role than Caiaphas.

But the other high priest I am reminded of was like Ezra, although He was so much greater than Ezra that it is not fair to even make the comparison (and if Ezra was around to ask, I am sure he would agree). Of this high priest, it is written:

Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels He helps, but Abraham's descendants. For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way, in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people. – Hebrews 2:14-17

Who is this high priest? You all know, of course. The very next verse says this:
Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. – Hebrews 3:1

Do you ever really think of Jesus in the way we have just read of Ezra? Jesus does not berate His people in anger, but, like Ezra, He grieves over their sin, and He intercedes for them. If you can imagine Jesus praying Ezra’s prayer, changing the sin to your sin, and praying for you in this way, you are imagining reality. Jesus has many roles, but one of them, one that should make you both weep in repentance and weep for joy, is that of high priest.

While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites—men, women and children—gathered around him. They too wept bitterly. – Ezra 10:1

And you can see the effect of Ezra’s prayer is much like I just described how it should be for us. There was repentance here on a mass scale. It was the effect of Ezra’s prayer, but I would not say that Ezra’s prayer was the cause. The cause was the Holy Spirit – there can be no question of this.

Then Shecaniah son of Jehiel, one of the descendants of Elam, said to Ezra, "We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us. But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel. Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the Law. Rise up; this matter is in your hands. We will support you, so take courage and do it." – Ezra 10:2-4

So Ezra rose up and put the leading priests and Levites and all Israel under oath to do what had been suggested. And they took the oath. Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the room of Jehohanan son of Eliashib. While he was there, he ate no food and drank no water, because he continued to mourn over the unfaithfulness of the exiles. – Ezra 10:5-6

Now, there are some difficult issues here. There is no question that it was sin to take these wives. But was it right to divorce them, to send them away?
In Deut. 24 we see that divorce was permitted. The chapter begins with this:

If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house… - Deut. 24:1

But although divorce was permitted, it was not God’s ideal plan. He allowed it because He knew how sinful man would be. The prophet Malachi, who lived in the same general time frame as Ezra, wrote these words given to him from God:

Another thing you do: You flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because He no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, "Why?" It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. – Mal. 2:13-14

Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are His. And why one? Because He was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. "I hate divorce," says the Lord God of Israel… - Mal. 2:15-16

Looking at the context of Malachi here, it seems like God is talking about a marriage between two Israelites, and so the “I hate divorce” statement is a response to those who leave their spouses for poor reasons.

Jesus spoke several times on divorce. During the Sermon on the Mount, He said,
It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery. – Matt. 5:31-32

This seems to expand on the thoughts in Malachi, giving what is and isn’t a good reason for divorce. And in Matthew 19, some Pharisees tried to “test” Jesus by asking if they could divorce for any reason. Jesus’ reply was to go back to Genesis, the “one flesh” thing, and He said, “Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.” The Pharisees then asked about the Deut. 24 passage.

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." – Matt. 19:8-9

And in I Corinthians 7, Paul writes that believers should not divorce their unbelieving spouses, but that if an unbelieving spouse wishes to leave, they should be allowed to do so.

So was Ezra wrong? Personally, I don’t think so. Our situation as believers is very different than the situation among the Israelites, who were under the Law. Marrying foreign wives was expressly forbidden, and it was a large part of what had led to Israel’s gross unfaithfulness to God in the past. These people were heading down the same road, but now, they had come to their senses and desired to please God. And in general, it is a dangerous game setting oneself up as judge of people in the past who clearly loved God. Where Scripture is silent, I think it is unwise to presume to judge. By the way, this issue will come up again in Nehemiah. Regardless, let’s continue with the passage:

A proclamation was then issued throughout Judah and Jerusalem for all the exiles to assemble in Jerusalem. Anyone who failed to appear within three days would forfeit all his property, in accordance with the decision of the officials and elders, and would himself be expelled from the assembly of the exiles. – Ezra 10:7-8

This is a big deal! All the exiles were to assemble, not just those with foreign wives. The penalty if you didn’t come was permanent expulsion for you and your descendants. Ezra viewed this as an urgent national emergency, and he was right. Do you ever think of sin in this way? It is, unfortunately, pretty foreign to our way of thinking.

Within the three days, all the men of Judah and Benjamin had gathered in Jerusalem. And on the twentieth day of the ninth month, all the people were sitting in the square before the house of God, greatly distressed by the occasion and because of the rain. Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them,

"You have been unfaithful; you have married foreign women, adding to Israel's guilt. Now make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers, and do His will. Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives." – Ezra 10:9-11

The time frame here is December. All of Israel was together outdoors in the cold rain. No doubt they already knew why they were here. Certainly, word had gotten out.

The whole assembly responded with a loud voice: "You are right! We must do as you say. But there are many people here and it is the rainy season; so we cannot stand outside. Besides, this matter cannot be taken care of in a day or two, because we have sinned greatly in this thing. Let our officials act for the whole assembly.

Then let everyone in our towns who has married a foreign woman come at a set time, along with the elders and judges of each town, until the fierce anger of our God in this matter is turned away from us." – Ezra 10:12-14

This was very wise. They decided to look at each case deliberatively, carefully, and no doubt, prayerfully.

Only Jonathan son of Asahel and Jahzeiah son of Tikvah, supported by Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite, opposed this. – Ezra 10:15

If it is the same Meshullam, as one listed later in the chapter, Meshullam is one of those who divorced his foreign wife. This would explain why he opposed it, but it is clear that by the end, he had a change in heart. There were a few dissenters, but it easy to lose sight of just how few this is. There are at least 30,000 men here, but less than a handful of them are opposed.

So the exiles did as was proposed. Ezra the priest selected men who were family heads, one from each family division, and all of them designated by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to investigate the cases, and by the first day of the first month they finished dealing with all the men who had married foreign women. – Ezra 10:16-17

Probably in some cases, the women would agree to convert, to set aside the idols of their fathers and forefathers, and to become worshipers of the true God. Some had probably already done this in their hearts, if not publically and officially. There would be no reason for such people to divorce.

But there were others where, at the time of marriage, the husband had no interest in the things of God, but the wife was a devoted follower of her family’s god or gods. And now that the husband was repenting and promising to follow the true God, the woman was deeply upset. She was not willing to change, and in many of these cases, she would want to leave her husband and go back to her own people. It would be in these cases that the divorce would be the obvious logical conclusion. In this way, you can see that the spirit of I Corinthians 7 may well have been kept in most cases.

Now, the rest of the chapter is a list of those who divorced their wives, and I am not going to read through the list. But let me summarize. There were seventeen priests. There were six Levites. There was one Temple singer. There were three Temple gatekeepers. And there were about 83 additional Israelites. (It’s difficult to get an exact number, because it isn’t always clear when the prefix ben which means “son of” is just part of a name or part of the previous name.) Altogether there were about 110 people, 110 families in which the husbands and wives divorced after going through this counseling process. As the chapter ends,

All these had married foreign women, and some of them had children by these wives. – Ezra 10:44

These children left with the wives. Now, are there applications in this passage for us? I am sure there are many, but I want to focus on two.

The first application we have already talked about – it is that Jesus, as our High Priest, intercedes for us. If you are struggling with an area of sin, I cannot tell you how powerful it can be if you really get this. Instead of living in a cycle of shame and guilt, instead of avoiding God in prayer when you sin, study over and over Ezra’s prayer. (Maybe I do need to write a book on it!) Jesus is for you, not against you. He is God, yes, and sin separates us from God. But He is also our High Priest, and when we sin, He prays for us. He prays for you. The more you understand this, the more you will Him, and the more you will be like these Israelites, willing to leave anything behind that could make you walk away from God. If you feel like you are in a battle over a particular area of sin, this is where you need to fight, not at the moment of temptation, but in the continual battle for your understanding of who Jesus is and how much He loves you. I’ll say it again: He is for you, not against you.

The second application I have not yet talked about. This application is especially for those who are unmarried. To you I say, please, do not marry an unbeliever! Guard your hearts! Our hearts are like powerful magnets – all they need is to get close to some metal, and they will pull you in a direction you never intended to go. Guard your hearts. All of us have weaknesses in our personalities, holes in our hearts caused by disappointments, or the imperfections of our parents, or even things we were just born with. And certain people can come along, and something they say, or just how they are, can start to fill these holes. It is so important to understand that even unbelievers can do this. And if we start to let these people fill these holes in our hearts, we will be almost irresistibly drawn to them.

And by unbelievers I don’t just mean people who obviously hate God. I mean anyone whose faith is hard to determine, or “fuzzy,” or weak. You should guard your heart against anyone whose faith is clearly weaker than your own. Don’t try to figure this out after you start to really like someone – at this point your heart will deceive you. Guard your hearts. I have seen many people who failed to guard their hearts, and I have seen pain that results. Please, please, guard your hearts.

It is hard to call the end of the book of Ezra a happy ending. It is true that the Temple has been rebuilt and is being used to worship God. It is true that the people have turned back to God. But it is a bittersweet time for the people of God. There is pain, and grieving, mixed with the joy. From this point forward, let us keep our hearts soft to God so that we do not have to experience any more pain of leaving behind.