Smoodock's Blog

After Ezra came to the Jewish authorities and gave them the offerings for the House of God, which were given by the king, his lords and the children of Israel (Ezra 8:25, 33-34), and after the appropriate burnt offerings were made to the Lord, as Ezra and his company presented themselves to the Lord in his House (Ezra 8:35), and after Ezra had delivered the king’s decrees to his satraps and governors on the west side of the Euphrates (Ezra 8:36), he was then officially greeted by the princes of Israel at Jerusalem (Ezra 9:1). It was at this time that they unveiled before him the terrible extremes, to which the Jewish people had gone, in order to avoid persecution and trouble from their neighboring nations.

They told him about the great apostasy that had developed in the land, since the release of the Jews under Cyrus. Originally, the Jews who journeyed out of captivity from Babylon to Jerusalem would have no dealings with the surrounding pagan nations (Ezra 4:1-3), but the intimidation of Israel’s enemies took its toll (Ezra 4:4-5; cp. Nehemiah 6:9), and many Jews began mingling themselves with the people of the lands, and this even included the princes and rulers of the Jews at Jerusalem. The children of the Lord had begun to live according to the manner of the abominations of the nations around them, worshiping according to their customs with their gods (Ezra 9:1).

This matter had begun among the princes and rulers of Judah during Nehemiah’s first tenure in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 6:17-18), but probably hadn’t continued to the degree it was shown to Ezra, because Nehemiah was a strong force to deter such rebellion against the Law of Moses. However, Ezra had come eight years after Nehemiah had been called back to Babylon and the work on the Temple and Jerusalem’s walls had ceased.[1] The rebellion had snowballed to incorporate many of the Jewish leaders, and the priests and Levites, especially among the upper classes, so that the Jewish race was becoming more and more intermixed with that of the nations (Ezra 9:2). If the trend were permitted to continue, there would no longer be a Jewish race that could claim to be separate from the nations.

Some scholars have tried to say Ezra’s record of the nations mentioned in Ezra 9:1 was expanded to include the Egyptians, but this isn’t true. It has always been understood that the nations mentioned in Exodus 34:11 and Deuteronomy 7:1 were not exclusive. In fact, when Solomon was said to have been unfaithful to the Lord by taking foreign wives, Pharoah’s daughter was among those he had taken in disobedience (1Kings 11:1). None of the lists are exact replicas of any of the others, and a simple comparison would show that intermarriage with any nation or tribe that was not among the twelve tribe of Israel wasn’t permitted, unless the foreigner became a Jew by embracing the Lord God of Israel as his or her own God. Not even the descendants of Jacob’s brother Edom were considered worshipers of the Lord God of Israel, as can be seen in the list below:

When Ezra heard the report, he tore his robe and began pulling out the hair of his head and beard, and he sat astonished over what was said (Ezra 9:3). Nothing is mentioned in the text that Ezra said anything. He simply sat in silence utterly astonished over what he’d heard. Then those who were faithful to the Covenant and trembled at the word of God, began to assemble themselves with Ezra, as he sat in mourning until the time of the evening sacrifice (Ezra 9:4), which was also the time of prayer (Acts 3:1; cp. Daniel 9:21).        

________________________________________________

[1] Nehemiah had led a release from Babylon to Jerusalem in the 20^th year of Darius Hystaspes, called Artaxerxes in Nehemiah 2:1-8. Nehemiah spent 12 years in Jerusalem rebuilding the Temple and the walls around the city (Nehemiah 5:14). If Hystaspes reigned for 33 years, then Xerxes 7^th year, when Ezra led a release from Babylon to Jerusalem, would have been eight years, since Nehemiah was called back by the king of Persia, with the building project being ceased until further notice (Ezra 4:21-24).