A New Life

No. 33 of Returning Home (Renewed)

The succinct Chinese proverb, “Talk doesn’t cook rice,” warns about what can happen when we make plans to change our lives but don’t follow through. Ezra was active in motivating the people to separate the nation of Israel from the tangled web of lawless intermarriage, but what about the men who were wrapped up in these marriages? Were they going to act?

The Bible tells it just as succinctly:

Then the returned exiles did so.
Ezra the priest selected men, heads of fathers’ houses, according to their fathers’ houses, each of them designated by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the matter; and by the first day of the first month they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women. -Ezra 10:16-17ESV

It took three months to sort out the ties that were breaking the civil laws of Israel. In the last verses, Ezra records the tribes and names of the men who separated from their godless wives. This list is more about the cleansing of the genealogical lines of the Hebrew race than it is about shaming these men. Ezra could have called them out while they were living in sin, but he records them in God’s book as they are reconciled with God. This documentation was necessary to prove the pure-blood lineage of the descendants of these men in the years ahead.

Speaking of keeping the genealogical line untainted by non-Hebrew blood, there is confusion about how Rahab and Ruth could be part of Jesus’ lineage when the men of Ezra’s time had to divorce their non-Hebrew wives. Both Rahab and Ruth, we see through their marriages to faithful men, followed God. In fact, both made personal declarations of their faith in Jehovah God (Rahab’s declaration and Ruth’s declaration). Their genealogies also prove they taught their children to follow Him. Their marriages were not political alliances because they separated themselves from their people and their pagan beliefs to obey God. The commandment to the Israelites not to marry “strange” women in Deuteronomy 7 includes context that warns against making covenants with pagan nations by marrying their daughters and giving Israelite daughters in marriage to pagan men. It is implied in this passage that these non-Hebrews married with the intent to continue in their pagan ways and beliefs. So, the transgression of the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7 would include turning away from God’s guidance to seek out a covenant with godless nations. This didn’t happen with Rahab or Ruth. Lastly, when Ezra writes Nehemiah’s account, making alliances with other nations through intermarriage rears its ugly head again, and its result is clearly a godless future.

In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. ²⁴ And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. -Nehemiah 13:23ESV

The Law of Moses was written in the language of Judah (Hebrew), and the children coming from these intermarriages had not learned the language. So, they weren’t learning about God and His covenant at all! Furthermore, they had been reared to speak a pagan language. Nations of this era were saturated in the concept that a people’s success hinged completely on the power of their god(s) to triumph over other nations’ god(s). So, Ashdod’s language was inherently biased toward their idolatrous beliefs and rituals. Jewish terms would not even translate into their language properly. Their disconnect from God’s language meant a separation from God that would only grow worse, with each succeeding generation being brought up to follow pagan ideas and practices.

 Now there were found some of the sons of the priests who had married foreign women: Maaseiah, Eliezer, Jarib, and Gedaliah, some of the sons of Jeshua the son of Jozadak and his brothers. ¹⁹ They pledged themselves to put away their wives, and their guilt offering was a ram of the flock for their guilt. -Ezra 10:18-19ESV

The ready scribe lists first the men of the priestly line. These priestly sons, in repentance and obedience to the law, complete their reconciliation with God in a way specific to the priesthood: they sacrifice a ram to atone for their guilt. Had this sin continued, the service of the priesthood by these men would have been rendered empty worship to God.

The rest of the men who returned to God are recorded in Ezra 10:20-43.

Readers of Ezra 10 sometimes come away with the wrong impression of God’s command to separate from these godless women. They misrepresent this account to mean that a Christian is free to divorce a spouse who isn’t a Christian. Our situation is very different from the necessary tribal cleansing of the Israelites. First, we Christians, under the law of Christ, are at liberty to marry from any nation. Furthermore, the principle of returning to a previous commitment with God should not be misconstrued to mean a sister in Christ can divorce an unbeliever simply because he is an unbeliever. I Corinthians 7 tells us that the marriage union to an unbeliever is a sanctified union, just like the union of two Christians. God recognizes this marriage; it is valid and it is sacred in His eyes. It’s true there are many dangers and little support in a marriage where one is trying to live for God and her spouse isn’t. A sister in Christ married to an unbelieving husband will likely be battling temptation to a greater degree; yet, she is still capable of keeping her covenant with Christ. The Israelite man of Ezra’s time, on the other hand, could not keep his covenant with God and remain in that law-breaking marriage.

Concluding his account of his return to Jerusalem and that of the first expedition, Ezra writes one last statement.

 All these had married foreign women, and some of the women had even borne children. – Ezra 10:44ESV

This statement holds more than the trauma of divorce. It speaks of broken families and the suffering of children with no choice but to be separated from their fathers.

Dear sister, I mourn every time I read about this terrible sin and its disastrous effects. Sometimes, when we look at the consequences of sin in someone’s life, we tend to want to label the struggle and the sorrow we see as the sin itself. But it isn’t. Sin is a vicious weed that grows in all directions and strangles goodness. It brings great sorrow far past its time. As the daughters of a just, long-suffering Father, we should do our best to stand behind and support the removal of sin from the heart and life in all of its slow, painful, and disastrous-seeming phases. It takes time to separate oneself from sin and its far-reaching consequences. Yes, there will be a time of great grief, but that will not be the end of the story. It will be the beginning of a renewed life.

This is the last post of the Returning Home series.