The critiques made against Ezra are not unfounded and should be considered. First, the ethical dilemma of divorcing and then abandoning a woman and her children is a hard punishment, especially in ancient times. Second, Jesus is very hard on divorce, and he severely limits the scope of what can be considered a legitimate divorce (Matt 19:1–12). Third, Paul allows Christians to remain married to non-Christians (1 Cor 7:12–16).1 These three points really do leave Ezra in a difficult place. Ezra is semi-condemning these women and children to a sad and sorry life, and Paul explicitly teaches Christians to stay with their non-Christian spouse in the hopes that their marriage would lead the non-Christian to salvation. What is going on in Ezra’s situation that makes his command for divorce unique and even acceptable?
Understanding Ezra’s Situation
To understand Ezra’s situation there are two key pieces of information we need. First, we must understand the relationship between religion and ethnicity. Second, we must understand that land and position are inherited through bloodline.
First, religion and ethnicity were closely related. In modern times, religion and ethnicity are separate and distinct categories, but they were not always so. In ancient times the god that you worshipped played a huge role in defining your ethnicity. For example, a person who worshipped Marduk would be a Babylonian. Or the person who worshipped Yahweh would be an Israelite. Moses teaches that any Gentile man who gets circumcised and celebrates the Passover would become a native to the land (Ex 12:48). This means a person can become a native Israelite through ritual participation in the worship of Yahweh.
What does this mean for Ezra? This means that it is completely in the realm of possibility for a Gentile to become a Jew by worshipping Yahweh.2 This raises the question: why haven’t these Gentile wives converted? There apparently resist converting; these women did not want to worship Yahweh. This resistance is made even more explicit in Nehemiah 13:23–27, where we are told that the children of these Gentile-Jewish marriages could not speak Hebrew, but they could speak their mother’s foreign tongue. The plot thickens: these women are not necessarily innocent bystanders who never had a chance to covert but are actively resisting becoming Jewish. They are raising their children outside the customs of Israel; they are raising them to speak foreign tongues. That means they cannot learn the Law of Moses. They will not be able to know and obey the commands of Yahweh. The women that Ezra commands the men to divorce are those who refused to convert to Yahweh. They are women who want nothing to do with the God of Israel.
The second piece of information is that in Israel, land (Deut 21:15–17) and positions of prominence (in this case the priesthood) are inherited through bloodline. The Levitical law was designed to protect land inheritance. If a man were to sell his land to another, it would return to him at the year of Jubilee. This system was created to protect the inheritance; each tribe’s promised land was safeguarded and kept within the family. Likewise, the priesthood and the role of the high priest was passed down through the sons of Aaron. The priesthood was not an open position for applications but was set to the family of Aaron. Both the land and priestly systems were built around inheritance and lineage.
This is where the real danger of the intermarriages lies. The Gentile wives and their children (who are not being raised as Jews) have legal claim over the land promises. When these Jewish men married the Gentile women they were unwittingly handing out the promises of God to people outside the covenant. With regard to the priesthood, this danger is not simply a hypothetical one but is very real. Nehemiah 13:28 says, “And one of the sons of Jehoiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was the son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite. Therefore I chased him from me.” Sanballat was one of the key antagonists in Nehemiah and led the resistance to rebuilding the wall. His daughter was married to one of the high priest’s sons! This means that in the very next generation, Sanballat’s grandson could be the high priest. This is the danger that Ezra is contending with. These marriages between the Jewish men and Gentile women pose a real threat to the promised inheritance of the land and their claim to the priesthood.
So far I hope to have shown the difficult circumstances that Ezra was navigating. He was not a racist who didn’t like the Gentiles, nor was he just a stubborn old man. He was a man trying to defend the core of his entire faith. But this does not yet explain Paul’s openness to non-believer marriages. The answer to this problem is quite simple: in the new covenant the levitical priesthood and land inheritance do not have the same role as they did in the old covenant. Jesus is our permanent high priest. He will not die again, and therefore we do not need to worry about the succession of priests anymore. There is no longer a strict priestly lineage to guard. With regard to the land promise, the land was more important in the old covenant because true worship of Yahweh had to be in Jerusalem at the Temple. The literal land of Israel played a larger role in the worship of Yahweh, but now that we are living temples of the Holy Spirit, our locale of worship has expanded to the edges of the world. This means there is less risk in having Gentile children born into the people of God.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Ezra commands the Jewish men to divorce their Gentile wives and to send them and their children away as a means to guard the covenant. The women are not open to conversion (hostile in some cases) and their children (if raised in the path of the mother) will leave the inner-workings of Israel at risk.
In the end, I am not saying that Ezra made a clean, easy and delightful decision. What I am saying is that Ezra was leading Israel through a wild time of change and that the people he was leading were really broken. There was no good decision for Ezra to make. He was doing the best he could with what he had to work.
What can we learn from Ezra’s leadership? There are three things. First, Ezra’s immediate response to the problem is prayer (Ez 9). Ezra is not making any rash decisions, nor is he acting in and through his own power. Ezra turns to Yahweh for guidance. As leaders we must be people of prayer, we must sit before our Lord and allow his presence to guide us in our decision making. Second, Ezra shows a thorough and deep understanding of the workings of the levitical system. He knew the dangers these women posed and identified what was at risk. As Christian leaders we must know how our churches, schools, non-profits, and so on run. We must understand the organizations we serve at so we can make well informed decisions. Third, Ezra was able to be decisive in a situation that was messy, hard and probably very unpopular with the people. He made his decision and stuck with it. As Christian leaders it is key they we do not waver in our decision making. To go back on a hard decision will not make things better. Look to Ezra as a man who did not waver.
In light of sin there are often times when there are no good options. Sometimes sin leaves us having to pick from a bunch of bad choices. Ezra chose what he saw as the best for Israel, what would protect the people and their institutions. It was a harsh decision, but sin is harsh and there are times when harsh decisions must be made. Ezra did what he thought was best even if it was not ideal. And it is in that, that we find humble, strong, and even good leadership.
Matthew Darby is an assisting priest at All Saints Anglican Honolulu.
NOTES
- It is important to note that although Paul does not condemn Christians marrying non-Christians, he does caution against it. Paul warns the Corinthian church against being “unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2 Cor 6:14). The point here is that Paul does not force a Christian to divorce an unbelieving spouse. ↩︎
- This touches on the recent work of Jason Staples who argues that one of the key facets of the gospel is about the restoration of Israel. Staples argues this restoration will partially come through making Gentiles true Israelites. This however, is not accomplished by circumcision but through Christ. We see this gospel theme even in the book of Ezra-Nehemiah: there is a hope that the Gentiles would join Israel. These Gentile wives could have become Israelites and conversion was a possibility, but they refused. For a great introduction to the work of Jason Staples, see James Woods’ First Things article. ↩︎