Casting Off Foreign Wives and you can Children

That’s not the conclusion the trouble, yet not

The book away from Ezra finishes with among the many sadder themes within the redemptive records. Adopting the priest Ezra takes the newest management of article-exilic Jewish society, hard where you work rebuilding the fresh temple in the costa rica most beautiful women Jerusalem, the guy leads the people into the recommitting on their own so you can fidelity towards the rules. He then gets distressful news. He’s told your returnees “haven’t split up themselves regarding individuals of your own lands which have the abominations, in the Canaanites, the newest Hittites, brand new Perizzites, the fresh Jebusites, the brand new Ammonites, the new Moabites, new Egyptians, plus the Amorites.” As an alternative, the folks features intermarried: “the fresh holy race keeps combined alone for the peoples of lands” (Ezra 9:1-2).

Horrified, Ezra guides individuals into the something out-of repentance. Among the many Jewish leadership, Shecaniah, comes to Ezra with an agenda:

I’ve damaged faith with your Goodness as well as have married international feminine about peoples of your property, but right now there can be hope for Israel regardless of it. Ergo let us make a great covenant with this Jesus to place out all these wives and their children, according to the counsel regarding my personal Lord and of individuals who tremble on commandment in our Goodness, and you may let it be performed according to Rules. (Ezra 10:2-3)

That’s just what happens. The book stops with a discouraging selection of people that partnered international female and you will bound so you’re able to breakup them, riding the women as well as their people out of the society (Ezra -44).

And you will Nehemiah’s response is all the more vitriolic (in the event the faster clear with its important outworking). Nehemiah mon, and you can Moab, as well as their college students were actually speaking foreign dialects. Hence

We encountered all of them and cursed all of them and you may defeat several of all of them and you can taken out hair. And i also made them simply take oath in the term off Goodness, claiming, ‘You will maybe not render your own daughters on the sons, or take the daughters for your sons or yourselves. ‘ Thus i washed them out-of everything you foreign. (Nehemiah -31)

So what is the training right here? Do Ezra 9-ten represent legitimate restoration, a typical example of what the chapel very seriously need today, as well as oftentimes preached? Try divorcing overseas women and you will banishing the college students on people actually the measure of legitimate piety?

The ebook out of Nehemiah finishes having Nehemiah’s admission that disease continuous

Really evangelical interpreters are short in order to say that an important problem to the “overseas feminine” inside Ezra-Nehemiah is their fidelity to help you overseas gods, not its foreign ethnicity. However, we should be clear the text by itself cannot say that it, and various students competition they. (Actually, Ezra-Nehemiah was often invoked because of the south defenders from racial segregation.) Whatsoever, all signal in the text message itself signifies that Ezra and you may Nehemiah was devoted to securing to the post-exilic neighborhood a significant the latest measure of love. “What you overseas,” once the Nehemiah leaves it, would be to feel washed outside of the individuals.

(In fact, there isn’t any opinion from the which such overseas women have been. Certain argue that these people were gentile women who got moved into the newest land otherwise lived on the close places. Other people argue that these were really the Jews that has stayed about home in the place of go into the exile when you look at the Babylon.)

We have no doubt one Ezra and you may Nehemiah sensed they certainly were acting from inside the accord on the Rules. But have been it right? Did what the law states in fact exclude new marrying of international women? Clearly it did not. Rahab and Ruth is actually well-known types of Canaanite and Moabite female which not just e forefathers out-of David and you may Goodness. Regulations did prohibit intermarrying with the idolatrous Canaanites, however it indeed generated arrangements getting Israelites which captured other foreign female and you can pressed them to your wedding (Deuteronomy -14). Presumably this type of overseas wives were to have to adopt the fresh Israelite faith.