A Devotion from D.A. Carson

Genesis 11; Matthew 10; Ezra 10; Acts 10

BROADLY SPEAKING, EZRA 10 is understood in two different ways:

According to the first view, what takes place is something akin to revival. Ezra’s tears and

prayer prove so moving that the leaders of the community, though they too have been

compromised by these intermarriages, enter into a pact to divorce their pagan wives and send

them home to their own people, along with whatever children have sprung up from these

marriages. Those who disagree with this decision will be expelled from the assembly of the

exiles (10:8), henceforth to be treated like foreigners themselves. The appropriate councils are

set up, and the work is discharged. This is remarkably courageous, a sure sign of God’s blessing,

ringing evidence that these people love God even more than they love their own families. The

purity of the postexilic community is maintained, and the wrath of God is averted. The lesson,

then, is that one must deal radically with sin.

According to the second view, although Ezra’s prayer (Ezra 9) is exactly right, the steps that

flow from it are virtually all wrong. Marriage, after all, is a creation ordinance. In any case, one

cannot simply undo a marriage; if the Law prohibits marriage with a pagan, it also prohibits

easy divorce. What about all those children? Are they to be banished to their pagan

grandparents, without any access to the covenant community and the one God of all the

earth—quite apart from the psychological damage that doubtless will befall them? Could not

other steps be taken instead? For example, all further mixed marriages could be proscribed and

rigorously prevented, under the sanction of being expelled from the assembly. Priests who have

intermarried could be stripped of priestly rights and duties. The kind of widespread repentance

that is evident could be channeled toward faithful study of the Law, not least by these mixed

families. What sanction is there for so inhumane an action as that in this chapter?

Strictly speaking, the text itself does not adjudicate between these two interpretations,

though the first of the two is slightly more natural within the stance of the book. But is it more

natural within the stance of the entire canon or of the Old Testament canon?

Without meaning to avoid the issue, I suspect that in large measure both views are correct.

There is something noble and courageous about the action taken; there is also something

heartless and reductionistic. One suspects that this is one of those mixed results in which the

Bible frankly abounds, like the account of Gideon, or of Jephthah, or of Samson. Some sins have

such complex tentacles that it is not surprising if solutions undertaken by repentant sinners are

messy as well.