§ 2. REFORMATION OF RELIGION ACCOMPLISHED BY EZRA AT JERUSALEM.
EXPOSITION
IN the interval between Zerubbabel's rule and the coming of Ezra from Babylon with a special commission appointing him governor of Judaea, the Jews seem to have been left without any strong controlling authority. The civil administration devolved upon a certain number of chiefs or "princes," who maintained order in Jerusalem, collected and remitted the tribute due to the Persian crown, and held courts to decide all causes, criminal and civil, in which only Jews were concerned. Tranquillity and order were sufficiently maintained in this way; but the governing power was weak, and in matters outside the range of the civil and criminal law men did pretty nearly "as it seemed good in their own eyes." During this interval of governmental debility, it appears that a fusion had begun between the Jews and the neighbouring nations. Although the law of Moses distinctly forbade intermarriage between the people of God and the idolatrous nations whose land they had inherited, and by implication forbade such unions with any neighbouring idolaters, the newly-returned Israelites, perhaps not fully provided with women of their own nation and religion, had taken to themselves wives freely from the idolatrous tribes and nations in their vicinity. They had intermarried with the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Amorites, the Egyptians, and even with the remnant of the Canaanites. Not only had this been done by the common people, but "the hand of the princes and rulers" had been "chief in this trespass" (Ezra 9:2). Nor had even the sacerdotal order kept itself pure. Priests and Levites, nay, the actual sons and nephews of the high priest Jeshua himself, were guilty in the matter (Ezra 10:18), had taken to themselves wives of the accursed races, and "mingled themselves with the people of the lands" (Ezra 9:2). The danger to purity of religion was great. Those who married idolatrous wives were tempted, like Solomon, to connive at their introducing unhallowed rites into the holy city; while the issue of such marriages, influenced by their mothers, were apt to prefer heathenism to Judaism, and to fall away from the faith altogether. A fusion of the Jews with the Gentiles in Palestine at this time would have meant a complete obliteration of the Jews, who would have been absorbed and swallowed up in the far larger mass of the heathen without materially affecting it. Thus God's purpose in singling out a "peculiar people" would have been frustrated, and the world left without a regenerating element. Considerations of this kind help us to understand the horror of Ezra when he understood what had taken place (Ezra 9:3-6; Ezra 10:1), and enable us to estimate at its right value the zeal that he displayed in putting down the existing practice and establishing a better order of things. His task was lightened to him by the fact that a large religious and patriotic party rallied to him, and associated itself with his reforms; a party including many of the princes and elders (Ezra 9:1; Ezra 10:8), and no doubt a certain number of the priests. He effected his reform by means of a commission of laymen (Ezra 10:16), which in the space of little more than three months inquired into all the suspected cases, and compelled every person who had married an idolatrous wife to divorce her, and send her back, with any children that she had borne him, to her own people. Thus,.for the time, the corruption was effectually checked, the evil rooted out and removed. We shall find, however, in Nehemiah, that it recurred in Nehemiah 13:23), in combination with various other abuses, and had to be once more resisted and repressed by the civil power (Nehemiah 13:30). This section is divisible into ten parts:—
3. His confession and prayer to God (Ezra 9:5-15);
4. Repentance of the people, and covenant sworn to, on the recommendation of Shechaniah (Ezra 10:1-5);
5. Ezra's fast (Ezra 10:6);
6. Proclamation summoning all the Jews to Jerusalem (Ezra 10:7-9);
7. Address of Ezra, and consent of the people to put away the strange wives (Ezra 10:10-14);
8. Opposition of Jonathan and others (Ezra 10:15);
9. Accomplishment of the work (Ezra 10:16, Ezra 10:17); and
10. Names of those who had married strange wives (Ezra 10:18-44).