Ezra 10:16-19

4. The decision is carried out.

TEXT, Ezra 10:16-19

16

But the exiles did so. And Ezra the priest selected men who were heads of fathers-' households for each of their fathers-' households, all of them by name. So they convened on the first day of the tenth month to investigate the matter.

17

And they finished investigating all the men who had married foreign wives by the first of the first month.

18

And among the sons of the priests who had married foreign wives were found of the sons of Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and his brothers; Maaseiah, Eliezer, Jarib, and Gedaliah.

19

And they pledged to put away their wives, and being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their offense.

COMMENT

Ezra 10:16 shows Ezra once more appointing men from the various households (clans) to help with this responsibility. These assembled within ten or eleven days. This is the point where we may ask what they had to investigate; was it only to discover every person in their communities who had offended or were they setting policies to check for sincere conversions among the parties involved?

Ezra 10:17 relates the completion of the investigation three months later, on the first day of the year, exactly a year after Ezra had assembled his group of exiles to go up to Jerusalem (Ezra 7:9).

Ezra 10:18 demonstrates the extent of the sin, even within the priesthood. (Notice that again, as at Ezra 10:5, the priests are listed first.) The book began with recognition for the fine work of the high priest Jeshua, son of Jozadak (Ezra 2:2; Ezra 3:2). It ends with the acknowledgment of the sin of some of his descendants and relatives. So the best of institutions must always be subject to reexamination.

According to Ezra 10:19, the offending priests gave their hands (literal meaning of pledged) to put away their foreign wives; we are reminded how far back the binding nature of a handshake goes, along with some of our other customs. This would save their land from the continued burden of their error; but what about the wrong already done? The heathen women were themselves victims of an injury which could never be righted in this world. Therefore, to atone for their guilt, the priests offered a trespass offering. Details of this are given in Leviticus 5:14-19; Numbers 15:22-31. It was, you will notice, for unintentional sins (Leviticus 5:17 f); there is no sacrifice in the O.T. for deliberate sins (Numbers 15:30 f). This suggests that those who were involved may not have been aware of the law; perhaps this particular law had not been sufficiently publicized. Or they may not have been impressed with the seriousness of their act. Evidently they had not deliberately intended to disobey one of God's laws. Most of our sins, then and now, probably would come under this category, because few people intend to do wrong deliberately. In most cases we are deceived, or misled, or thoughtless; but the consequences are still the same, and the damage is just as real.

While only the priests are mentioned as making this offering, it is possible that the other offenders did likewise.

WORD STUDIES

COVENANT (Ezra 10:3, Berith): comes from the verb, eat. To make (literally, cut) a covenant, persons butchered and cut up a domestic vegetarian (peaceful) animal (see Genesis 15) and arrived at their agreements around a table of good fellowship. Peace treaties, religious obligations, personal contracts were all sealed in this way. God's covenant with man always had this connotation of fellowship, or sharing, including His obligation to bless if the covenant was kept.

TAKE OATH (Ezra 10:8, Shaba): swear, to seven oneself. Seven, a sacred number, calls attention also to offerings that would be made to seal an oath (Genesis 21:28 ff).