Ezra 10:10-12

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

Footnotes

1. Ezra 10:11 The apparently great severity which characterized Ezra’s divorce policy, as shown in chapters 9 and 10, becomes thoroughly justified when Israel’s tragic experiences because of marriages with heathen women are considered. The consequent idolatry, first of King Solomon, for example, and then of the whole nation, was fatal. God’s wrath had been so great that He not only took the kingship from Solomon, but eventually turned the Israelites over to their enemies and left the promised land desolate, while the people bewailed their fate as captives in a heathen country. Ezra, to whom the keeping of God’s law was of constant concern, had been born in captivity among exiles who hung their harps on the willow trees and grieved for the country, for the peace and prosperity which their now justly offended God had once given them. Nothing could have been more abhorrent to Ezra than that the Jews should again fall into the snare of idolatry. His action in leading the exiles to give up their foreign wives and their children was the only way out if God’s consuming wrath was not again to be incurred. That those still living of the 42,360 men who over eighty years before had made up the congregation (Ezra 2:64) also saw complete separation from the foreign women as the unavoidable solution is obvious from the fact that only four (Ezra 10:15) spoke against it. However, those who were now actually married to native heathen women were only 17 priests, 10 Levites, and 86 laymen—113 in all, according to the records, though the list may be incomplete.