Wednesday: Ezra Acts
Read Ezra 10:1-44. How did Ezra and the leaders tackle the issue of intermarriage?
Together, the whole assembly decided to send the foreign wives away. Amazingly, even those who married them agreed with the plan, except for the four men mentioned by name in Ezra 10:15. The Jews promised to send their spouses away, and it took three months for the plan to be carried out. In the end, 111 Jewish men sent their wives away (Ezra 10:18-43).
Image © Lifeway Colletion at Goodsalt.com
Interestingly, the last verse (Ezra 10:44) states that some of these mixed marriages already had children. Sending away the mothers from families with children doesn’t seem rational or even right to us. However, we must remember that this was a unique time where God was starting over with the Jewish nation, and, in a sense, they with Him. Fully following God required radical measures.
The specific words used in Ezra 10:11, Ezra 10:19 for “separate yourself” (badal) and “put away” (yatza’) are not used anywhere else in the Scriptures for divorce. Ezra would have known the terminology regularly used for divorce, but he chose not to use it. Thus it is apparent that Ezra did not consider the marriages valid after it was discovered that they were in violation of the Torah command. In other words, the marriages were nullified because they were contrary to the law. The process was dissolution of invalid marriages. However, we are not given information on what happened to those wives and children and what impact this action had on the community. According to the custom of that time, the former husbands would have taken care of the transfer of their former wives and their children. The wives normally would have gone back to their native fathers’ homes.
Over time, however, some Jewish men once again began to marry unbelievers, and perhaps some even returned to the wives they sent away. The fleeting nature of the solution can be attributed to human nature and our up-and-down cycle of commitment to God. Even those of us who consider ourselves strong believers have to admit that we have gone through periods of lesser dedication to God when our walk with Him could have accurately been described as wanting. Unfortunately, humanity struggles with putting God first.
| What has been your experience with times of “lesser dedication to God”? What have you learned from those experiences? |
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There are bits of the Bible that I find hard to take, and the story of the wives and children is one of them. It would appear that over 100 marriages were involved and some of them included children. I am very much aware that the culture was different back then and that women were regarded as property, but one cannot help but think that there were relationships that had developed and even love was involved. We are not even sure that the separation worked. The lesson authors do not end on a note that the families separated and got on with the business of growing spiritually and developing the new nation.
And clearly there is no precedent set for today. I doubt that any minister in a Seventh-day Adventist Church would preach that couples involved in mixed marriages should divorce or face being disfellowshipped. How then do we respond to such Biblical passages.
Paul states:
... so what do we learn from this episode described in Ezra?
One of the things that should learn is that we can make all the rules we like, human nature being what it is is going to mess up the rules and we are going to live with the consequences, even when we are truely repentant of what we have done. Most of us have made poor decisions in the past and we are the ones who have to live with the consequences. Relationships, health, financial and spiritual decisions are an ongoing part of life and we do not always make the right decisions. Sometimes those decisions are through ignorance, but all too often selfishly or wilfully. We have to live with our mistakes and we also have to bear the consequences of the decisions of others.
Perhaps one thing that we should keep in mind is that "Rule Making" does not guarantee compliance. The real change has to take place in the mind and heart of the person. If we read what Paul has to say about rules and grace with that in mind we will understand him a lot better.
You're right, we'd be fooling ourselves if we didn't admit this is a really hard chapter to fully understand.
My own mind wanders back in Deuteronomy 31. Moses tells the generation about to enter Canaan to follow God, and they'll be blessed...only to have God and Moses both say, "You kids are going to mess this up, though."
It's so weird to read that, but to be fair, God can see the future. He already knows they're going to turn to false gods (...again), no matter how good He is to them.
And I wonder if that's part of what's in play here in Ezra. God has to send the outside influences away, as rough as that is for everyone. Otherwise, maybe He already knows what's going to happen: they'll scoot on back to Baal worship in no time flat. If the pagan spouses have no interest in following Him, is there much choice left?
Is it possible that there is something else to consider? The Torah forbade intermarriage...and yet we have non-Hebrew women in the lineage of the Messiah: Is it possible that the foreign women who refused to integrate into the culture/mission of pre-Messiah Israel/Judah, especially those married to men in leadership, were a threat to the preparations necessary for the arrival of the Messiah and therefore expelled from the Community/culture preserved by God for the express purpose of protecting the path and preparing the way of the Messiah? In the larger picture, the Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, the reforms of marriage reinstated by Ezra and Nehemiah may have been necessary to prevent Satan’s efforts to prevent the Messiah’s birth/mission of saving humankind from sin?...or not?
I believe you're "right on," Gary.
Furthermore, the "non-Hebrew women" in the lineage of the Messiah all accepted the true God as their Lord. With that, they were accepted into the covenant community, and no difference was made between them and any other Israelite. Any "stranger" could join the covenant community by accepting Yahweh as Lord and the males becoming circumcised.
In the time of Nehemiah, it appears that the women refused to accept Yahweh as Lord and continued to practice not only their language and culture but also continued to worship their gods. In other words, the refused to assimilate, and God's sentence was that they should be expelled. This was necessary to maintain the character of the covenant community from which the Messiah would arise.
It should provoke some thought regarding our situation today.
An indication of the woman refusing to assimilate was that their children could not speak the language of Judah Nehemiah 13:24
Hello Gary,
I had similar thoughts. This point in prophetic history is crucial because it is the start of the 70 week prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 for the coming Messiah. The activity of satanic agencies are clearly evident to prevent the return of the children of Israel to the Promised Land (Jeremiah’s 70 year prophecy), to prevent the rebuilding of the Temple and the walls of Jerusalem, to prevent the re-establishment of worship of the true God, to destroy the children of Israel (see the book of Esther) and to sabotage through apostasy the leadership and the people who had returned.
Richard Ferguson
A sermon I heard, if someone on our blog know the name of the pastor please credit him but the testimony shared by the pastor in the sermon is well fitting for our study today.
There was a young man who was married but had an affair and living with another lady came to church.
A well meaning people in the church asked him to straighten up his life and be sincere in his walk with the Lord before returning to church.
He knew, he was not right with the Lord and did not know how to change his way of life.
He went to a prayer meeting asked the pastor privately to pray for him.
Pastor asked him what his prayer request was and he talked about his life struggle and asked for victory from sin.
Pastor said, I will pray for your victory; however, I need you to start having a devotional life with Christ.
How do I do that? Start by reading and studying the bible in order to get to know Christ in the bible.
The man said, I am going to go home send the lady away, going to straighten up my life and start my relationship with Christ.
The pastor asked don't you want the lady to be saved?
The man asked what should I do?
Study the bible with her.
When he asked the lady to study the bible with her, she left him but he continued to study the bible
What he studied transformed his life, he became a new person falling in love with Christ.
Eventually he rejoined with his wife and they studied the bible together.
Even though his wife had never left the church, she did not have a personal relationship with Christ.
They both studied the bible and fell in love with Christ.
When the lesson today states, they sent her away with the children.
God is love. A loving God will not disown people who are willing to forsake their old life and live the new life in Christ.
If someone deliberately chooses to disobey God and will be harmful influence to the Isarelites then they must be put away.
Genesis 21 Hagar is sent away
Holy Spirit will successfully perform this (sogiry)please correct my spelling
Without the Holy spirit we can only but complicate it the more.
He convicts and convinces the wost of sinners, he revives,transforms and reforms. If he does all this I believe he can resolve the most delicate issues the Sinner most have entangled himself with.
I remember the the words of a song that encouraged us to come to the Savior; it says "Ye who are worried and Borden by sin, come just as you are;come to the Savior a new life begin oh come just as you are". God bade us to come to him just as we are. As we come and beging the journey of new life with him the Holy is making each step in the journey anew,dificolf discission becomes simple and the impossible becomes posible through the power of the Holy Spirit. We can't just help ourselves if we can then Grace is not needed.
Remember the Holy Spirit is interceding with Groning for us
Tough love, that's a phrase was evidently coined by Bill Milliken when he wrote the book Tough Love in 1968.
"Tough love is an expression used when someone treats another person harshly or sternly with the intent to help them in the long run. ... For example, genuinely concerned parents refusing to support their drug-addicted child financially until he or she enters drug rehabilitation would be said to be practicing tough love".
https://www.definitions.net/definition/tough+love
I was in a situation recently where tough love had to be employed. This is something the 'overly soft hearted' christian tend to shy away from,(church board members will know this) but as Ezra has shown, and as today's lesson puts it, fully following God sometines requires radical measures which may seem harsh but will benefit us in the long term.
The reason for us sometimes finding ourselves in unfavorable circumstances can be summed up by the last sentence in today's lesson: "Unfortunately, humanity struggles with putting God first."
"As intelligent beings, we need to sit down and think whether we are really seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. The very best thing we can do is to think soberly and candidly whether we desire to put forth the effort necessary to obtain the Christian hope and secure the Christian’s heaven. If through the grace of Christ we decide that we do, the next question is: What is there that I must cut away from my life in order that I shall not stumble? .
(This Day With God,pp.48,50).
The lesson says it was hard sending away mothers from families with children - Ezra 10:3 says that the children were sent away with their mothers otherwise the holy seed would be mixed with the pagans Ezra 9:2.
As others have said innocent people often have to live with the consequences of someone else's bad choices, maybe that is what is meant in Ex 20:5
The ultimate and severest consequence of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Sin creates a schism between God and the sinner (Isa 59:2). This is the foremost consequence of humanity's rebellion against God Almighty.
We must recall that as a direct result of Israel intermarrying with surrounding Godless nations wickedness among God's people became pervasive. Immorality, degradation and barbarity invaded the facet of life. Kids were sacrificed to pagan gods. Male and female prostitution became commonplace right in the temple as part of the religious rite. This contagious evil was encouraged by those Israel intermarried with. It was for this reason that Ezra's mournful confession touched the hearts of many. They wept bitterly. But confession is incomplete without renunciation of sin.
The Jews correctly decided to annul their illegitimate marriages with all its attendant consequences. It's not a matter of cruelty or lack of tolerance. We see in today's world how emphasis on tolerance has led to moral relativism. If one does not cut the ambilical cord with sin, one is simply continuing in sin.
The reality is ,we as Christians we have to separate from non believers of our faith especially about Marriage ,But we can succeed thru prayers...