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Only four months after Ezra’s arrival (458 BCE), Judean officials reported to him that the returnees had a serious intermarriage problem. These informants were quite possibly the judges Ezra appointed when he set up a judicial system for the province (7:25). As new appointees, they took seriously their responsibility to consult Ezra on matters of concern that required judication. Their investigation into the community’s Torah compliance revealed that a subset of returnees “had not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations” (9:1). They accused the laity, priests, and Levites of violating God’s marriage laws.
Because Ezra had been in the land for only a brief time, the problem preceded him. Those who had intermarried with the locals were among the first wave of returnees. As the original remnant, they were the group who responded to the divine stirring of their spirit to immigrate to Judah after the edict of Cyrus. They were the founders of the restored nation who had endured drought, inflation, and the hardships of rebuilding. Despite all the obstacles, they completed the temple and renewed the Jewish worship calendar. Soon enough, however, members of the remnant gave into the temptation of marrying their pagan neighbors. Based on Ezra’s reaction to the news, their integration of paganism into the heart of the family unit threatened to bring down the whole restoration project. Worse yet, according to the informants, “in this faithlessness the officials and leaders have led the way” (9:2).
Biblical literacy
The officials reporting to Ezra worded their report in a manner that displayed their newly sharpened biblical literacy. They likened their contemporary pagan neighbors to the nations that threatened the ancient Israelites when they first entered Canaan after forty years of wandering. The officials says the returnees were marrying people like “the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites” (9:1). They did not mean they were marrying those exact people groups, because many of them no longer existed in the Persian period.
Ezra’s main goal after arrival was giving the people an introductory crash course on the laws of Moses and the foundations of their faith (Neh. 10:3). The way the officials worded their reports to Ezra showed they were paying close attention to his teaching. They understood the parallels in their current situation with the threats presented to the Israelites in the days of Moses and Joshua. With new eyes, they saw how the old laws applied to their current reality.
The officials read the stories of Israelites who first entered Canaan, under the leadership of Joshua. From the outset of the conquest, God commanded them to separate themselves from the nations residing in the land, which included the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and Amorites (Deut. 7:1; Ex. 36:12). When the people conquered Canaan, they faced competing beliefs and gods. A ban against intermarriage protected them from assimilation.
According to Deuteronomy, the consequences of absorbing unconverted pagans into the chosen people were dire. Moses warned:
“Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for that would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly” (Deut. 7:4).
The officials speaking to Ezra seemed like they were listing random names of irrelevant nations, but they were carefully choosing their wording to appeal to all the Bible’s interconnected commands forbidding marriage to idolators. Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, and Jebusites were no longer a national people by the postexilic age and therefore zero threat to the remnant. The reference was strictly a callback to the Torah’s original prohibition against marrying outsiders.
To their list of prohibited peoples, they added other names of Israel’s historic enemies: the Moabites, the Ammonites and the Egyptians. Because the Moabites and Ammonites were hostile to the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings, God forbid intermarriage with them forever (Deut. 23:3). They survived as Israel’s neighbors into the Second Temple period. The officials added Egyptians to the list of banned outsiders because at the time they had a large influential presence in Judah that was likely threatening.
The laws against intermarriage that applied at the time of the conquest (1400 BCE) also applied to the remnant (458 BCE), even if the identity of the threatening pagan neighbors changed. The “people of the lands” was the narrator’s generic term for the locals in the land of Judah before the return of the remnant. Included among the peoples of the land were those non-exiled Judeans who retained their belief in Yahweh but also adapted the beliefs and practices of their neighbors. The peoples of the land were also those foreign captives that Assyria forcefully deported to Israel centuries before (4:2).
Threat of Intermarriage to the family
When the officials notified Ezra of the marriage crisis, they were clear that these were not gentile converts to faith in Yahweh or adherents to the laws of Moses. The idolators brought with them “their abominations” (9:1), meaning they gave idolatry a foothold in their homes. God gave the command for the people of Israel to separate themselves from outsiders specifically to prevent such a scenario.
Intermarriage with unbelievers was the surest way to take Yahweh out of the family unit, replacing proper worship with syncretism. Before the ancient Israelites entered the promised land, Moses warned them how intermarriage threatened the next generation. Idolatrous mothers could easily turn the hearts of their children and husband from Yahweh. He counselled, “their daughters who prostitute themselves to their gods will make your sons also prostitute themselves to their gods” (Ex. 34:16). Moses further warned the Israelites, “do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for that would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods” (Deut. 7:3-4).
Holy Seed
The informants further alerted Ezra that “the holy seed has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands” (9:2). Holy seed is a strange term. The only other place the Bible uses the phrase was when the prophet Isaiah called the delivered remnant “the holy seed” (6:13). It is likely a combination of two titles for the chosen people, “seed of Abraham” (Gen. 12:7) and “holy people” (Deut. 7:6).
The “holy seed,” or remnant, were the biological descendants of Abraham. They were a nation set apart to carry the name of Yahweh (Num. 6:27). However, the definition of what being a full member of Israel required in the time of Moses got stricter in the time of Ezra. In the First Temple period, people pursued holiness by being obedient to the law. In the postexilic period, the definition of holiness added a genealogical component which grew in importance judging by the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah.
However, there was another nonracial element that defined the remnant’s group identity. An unusual prerequisite for inclusion into the remnant was the experience of exile. The exile, instead of voiding the Jewish belief in election, reinforced it. Trauma-bonded, the survivors of captivity trusted only each other. For the first generation of returnees, the dividing line between former exiles and the rest of Israel was sharp. Over time, the line softened. In Ezra’s day, however, there was no softening.
To our modern sensibilities, talk of holy seed is off-putting, like Ezra focused only on the pure pedigree of the remnant. Was his nervousness about intermarriage merely ethnic prejudice?
Put in context, the informants’ alarm about the holy seed’s contamination seems more concerned with the contamination of the people morally, ethically, and spiritually. Also in antiquity, there was no separation between race and religion, no separation between church and state, no distinction between national identity and national religion. To absorb pagan spouses into the Israelite community meant making a place for their pagan gods. The problem Ezra had with mixed marriages was not racial but spiritual.
In the New Testament, Christian faith actively proselytized to all nations. Jesus died for the Jew and the Greek, the slave and the free person (Gal. 3:28). Still, Paul discouraged marriages between believers and unbelievers on spiritual, not racial grounds. He instructed, “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and lawlessness have in common? Or what partnership is there between light and darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14).
Prayer
Although Ezra was astonished when he heard the news of the marriage crisis in the community, he did not immediately set out in a flurry of active reforms. In his distress, Ezra tore his clothes and pulled his own hair from his head and beard (9:3), imitating the traditional ritual of mourning a death, such was the severity of his grief.
Ezra’s horror over their unbelief was not an overreaction. For Ezra, the stakes were as high as possible. Idolatry and covenant violation got them into the first mess of exile. And Ezra believed the community was on the brink of ruining the covenant relationship again. They could not play fast and loose with who they worshiped alongside Yahweh. The people were to separate themselves and follow the one true God. Instead, their habitual sin risked undermining the entire return movement.
Ezra’s reaction drew a crowd, “all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel” gathered around the scribe (9:4). Only at the time of the evening sacrifice was Ezra jolted out of his silent stupor. On his knees with his hands extended in submission to God, Ezra prayed publicly in the temple courts. Though Ezra was communing with God, he meant for all those within earshot to hear his words, especially the guilty temple officials. Ezra hoped all those gathered would feel convicted by his appeal to God and join with him in the confession.
Ezra’s prayer was confessional, listing all the sins and guilt of the people that piled up to heaven (9:6-7). As their spiritual leader, he took personal responsibility for the sins of the community even though he was innocent of the sin of assimilation and intermarriage. New to the restored community in Judah, Ezra most certainly led an upright life in exile. Still, his prayer pronouns are I, we and our, never they or them. Ezra served as the people’s representative before God, putting the words of lament in their mouths through his own confession. He tells God, “I am too ashamed and disgraced…to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads” (9:6). He confessed, “Here we are before you in our guilt, though no one can face you because of this” (9:15).
Vulnerable and honest before God, Ezra confessed the sins of his national compatriots and their ancestors as if they were his own. He chronicled the long history of Jewish rebellion against God that eventually left them “subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hands of foreign kings” (9:7). He admitted that the sin of their ancestors provoked the penalty of exile. Ezra was concerned because the remnant displayed the same instinct to rebel as their ancestors, as if the lesson of exile was lost on them. A hopeless feeling came over Ezra that the cycle of sin and punishment had no end.
Ezra contrasted the faithfulness of God with the unfaithfulness of the people (9:8-9). He listed God’s gracious and merciful acts to get them back. By giving the remnant favor in the eyes of the empire and the political and financial support of the imperial powers, they had space to succeed in all God had purposed for them. He knew the remnant existed in a liminal space. Ezra called their time of transition a “brief moment,” “a firm place,” and “a little relief in our bondage” (9:8). They could go the way of their ancestors or they could forge a new path. If they chose to continue in their sin, they would not survive. If they recognized their survival as a testimony of God’s mercy, they could capitalize on their second chance and begin again.
Ezra was not a prophet. He made no claim to know how God will respond. He trusted God’s justice and mercy based off his handling of Israel throughout their history (9:13-15). At no point did Ezra make excuses for their sins. He did not even ask for forgiveness. With the spirit of a reformer, he saw no purpose in asking God to forgive sin that the people did not cease.
For Ezra, repentance preceded a revived commitment to obedience.
The remnant survived Jerusalem’s destruction and decades of exile. God gave them favor in the eyes of three Persian kings so they could make the arduous journey to their homeland. God gave them “new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins” (9:9). Despite the abundant mercy of God, they managed to pollute the land again with their sin. Ezra lamented that the land was unclean because they ignored the laws of Moses and pursued marriages with pagan peoples (9:11).
The question on Ezra’s mind was what if the remnant failed and what if they already had pressed the self-destruct button? Ezra asks God, “Would you not be angry with us until you destroy us without remnant or survivor?” (9:14). Would God eject them from the same land he had returned them to (9:12)?
Ezra’s prayer ended with a question and the reformer did not know God’s answer. He was unsure if the people have already exhausted God’s mercy (9:15). He did not know how close they had come again to provoking his judgement.
In the biblical landscape, prayer took on a new emphasis in the postexilic period. In the decades of Babylonian exile that the Jewish people had no temple, prayer was their only means for communing with God. Prayer without sacrifice was how they appealed to God for protection, provision, and praise.
The biblical books chronicling events of the Persian period elevated the practice of spontaneous prayer far higher than the narratives from the days that the First Temple still stood. Daniel prayed three times a day (Dan. 6:10). When Esther prepared for an intervention to save her people from the plans of Haman, she solicited the Jews of Susa to pray and fast for three days (Est. 4:16). Nehemiah prayed and fasted before commencing the city wall (Neh. 1:5-11).
Ezra also was in the good habit of communing with God through prayer. Even though in Ezra’s own day, the Second Temple was complete and he had alternative ways to approach God, his first instinct after hearing terrible news was to collapse in prayer. The remnant was a praying people. That fact, almost more than anything else, signaled that they would also be a surviving people. As Christians, we too inherited the instruction to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thes. 5:17).
Shabbat Shalom