40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ezra 9:3-10:44 (Episode 359)

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Chad and Daniel wrap up the book of Ezra. Ezra is filled with fear over the intermarriage. A prayer is prayed. A promise is made. A solution is put into action. But is any of it right? And was any of it something God wanted? Have a listen! Donate 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out all the things that are going on over there. You go check out articles, academies, other podcasts, videos, events, all that stuff. It's all living over there, so make sure that you check it out. Chad and I are going to endeavor to wrap up the book of Ezra in this episode.

This is what we have decided to do. So we'll see if we are able to achieve our goals. We'll see if we're able to stay on track and get through this. We got a weird ending to a book right here, man. I mean, this is not the way—I think we talked about this last episode. There felt like there was sort of a natural ending or like something kind of good was going to happen or gearing up for the ending, and then you just get this weird ending, which this is part of the reason that you know—

Well, this is one of the reasons to believe that the Bible is being honest with you. Because if you were writing a story, and you're just trying to make something interesting, this is not how you end books. If I was writing a book and just making something up about God, I don't end it this way. I only do this if I'm actually just relaying information. I'm just telling you what happened. I'm just giving you the history, because this is a terrible ending. you ever watch like a tv series where you know it's maybe the first season maybe two seasons in

and you're expecting it to be multi-season you get to like the final episode and you're like man that was just it's not really i don't want it but i guess there'll be a third season coming out you know they'll kind of resolve everything but there's never a third season it's canceled it's canceled that's kind of the way i feel at the end of ezra like uh is there another chapter here but there's there's not so it's a good thing that nehemiah is considered like ezra part two right because yeah yeah but yeah because this is i mean just to like put the pen down at the end of this is like that is and here's the thing it doesn't it's not giving you um you know it doesn't it doesn't give you commentary on what's happening it just tells you what happens and you're just

left being like what like is that that doesn't seem good no it's it ends with a whole list of people who uh had to divorce wives and send their kids away which is not the best way to end a book but anyway that's that's where we're it's where we're heading like you said it's our goal to finish so we'll uh we will endeavor to do that we spent a lot of time last episode on ezra 9 1 through all four the basic situation here for those of you who might not have listened to that if you haven't i encourage you to stop this episode go back to listen to that episode to get the whole context but you've got a situation developing in israel here where it's been brought to ezra's attention as well as to the attention of all the officials that there are some people

who are in jerusalem in that area who have married non-israelites and uh they're trying to kind of address and figure out what to do with with these marriages in this situation and as we pointed out last time what they've done is they have they tried to take laws that were given in the torah that applied to the people of israel that prohibited intermarriage with the canaanite inhabitants of the land those that joshua and his army were to expel or exterminate so they're trying to take these laws that apply to the Perizzites and the Canaanites and so on and so forth, and they're adapting these laws to their present day and then applying them to the non-Israelites who are living in the land at the time, who are not falling into these specific

categories of the ites from back in Joshua. So this is not a case where you're taking biblical text that still is directly applicable to your situation, but instead it's an interpretation and an application of kind of the spirit of that law to the time of Ezra. Do you think that's a kind of summary of what's happening here? Yeah, these are the kind of parts of Scripture where i don't think that you're supposed to really apply this to yourself at all i mean no i'm saying that's what they're doing yeah yeah whether they're right or wrong i mean that's that's kind of what we're talking about here and as we talked about last time it's wrong yeah but what they're what they're attempting to do would be okay this loss applied to that

particular situation those particular people now we're in a different situation we got different peoples so does that law still apply to us and if it doesn't then how can we interpret it and then apply it to our own situation or or can we you know yeah no that's definitely what's happening here and then what what you're tempted to do yeah is to say like well here's what they did so like now what what's uh let me imagine a situation where i will go and do likewise and the answer to that is, one, first you have to establish that they should have done this, which is not clear. I mean, I would say it's clear that they shouldn't have done this, but there's no thus saith the Lord coming down out of the mouth of Ezra here saying that this is what God told

them needed to happen. And two, when someone does something in Scripture, sometimes maybe you just need to read it and just know that you should never apply that to any of your situations, because it doesn't apply to any of your situations. This is just telling you something to happen. If you were going to pull some application out of what we're about to go through, the application would be when you're afraid that something bad might happen, which I think is what is happening here, that Ezra's freaked out that the errors of the past are going to be repeated

by the intermarrying of people groups, all this kind of stuff. This is fear-based interpretation. Yes. Don't use, like, don't commit huge sins to prevent potential sins.

That's what this is to me. To me, this is, you're going to do something terrible to prevent something that you're afraid of from happening. Yeah, that's a good summary of exactly what's going on here. Yeah, the fear, and certainly it's a legitimate fear. I mean, if you look at the past of Israel, as we have throughout Samuel and Kings, yeah, I mean, they went hardcore into idolatry, and they suffered greatly.

I mean, they just got back from exile, and they're trying to establish themselves in the land, and they're endeavoring in a very good sort of way not to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. great that's that's something we should all strive to do uh however there are ways in which you can make that not happen that are different from what they decided to to do you know what's interesting about this is that if you go back a little ways and you you might remember i was talking about this when they celebrated the passover you had this like really cool thing where it was like one lamb and it says that people ate the one lamb and obviously there was more than one but you had this picture of Christ where they had this singular lamb, and they ate of this singular lamb, and it's all singular language, and then it says, and everyone ate of it, all

the people, and then also everyone who had left the idolatry of the land and the uncleanliness of the land, so all these other people, presumably, that some of them were the Jews that had been left behind and had picked up habits, they'd left those alone, and presumably other people. So you had this sort of like bringing people in, and not long after that now you have this happen, right? So you're reading this, and is there not a better way to say, like, are these converts? Like, the idea here is you had this sort of, like, beautiful, inclusive Passover thing that happened, and then you end with this, and that's a real bummer. I get it if Ezra's like, hey, is there idolatry getting into your houses with this stuff, or what's going on? Why don't you just go

do a theological audit of what's happening here like did you did you just marry like rando person from across the way that has four other gods they're worshiping or did you marry one of these people who was part of this passover thing that is totally all in on like yeah i'm cool with the god of yahweh that's my god now you don't have any hint that that's what's going on here like what what if all these people just married someone like yeah they converted they're in but they just like yeah what if they married uh what if they married a ruth right yeah man what if they married a woman who's uh described in these glowing terms so what i mean what if some of these women who were sent away were a ruth kind of woman right i mean and yeah well statistically that would that

would match up because what do you think all of them are jezebels i mean you're out to worship baal and and to and to turn their husbands away from from yahweh that it doesn't it doesn't match up. So anyway, that was kind of the situation here. I mean, it is a very good lesson that when you're taking something from the scriptures, you always have to ask yourself whether this is descriptive or proscriptive. Is this telling us what happened? Just describing what happened? Or is it telling us, hey, this is exactly what should take place? Because there are people, even today, who are going to misuse passages like this and try, well, for instance, to prohibit marriage outside your race, or something

like that. You can make an argument that it's not a good idea to marry people of a different religion. I mean, Paul will say this, that this is a very bad idea. So if you're a Christian, you might not want to marry

a Buddhist. This is going to cause problems, especially once you have children involved, so this is going to be a bad idea. But that's religions, and I think for sure what what ezra is concerned about here is that uh but i think it's important to know that like all these people they all look the same so like so um yeah this is everybody everybody in

this environment would have looked the same yes we're not dealing with different different races here. And so, yeah, it would be a gross misuse of Ezra chapter 9 to try and take what was done back then and to apply it to some sort of prohibition against interracial marriages today. I mean, the grossest of violations of Ezra chapter 9 to do that. That's not what is in the purview of this text whatsoever. And as we've been describing, even what they did with these non-interracial marriages, but rather interreligious kind of marriages, there were other ways to address the situation. Well, Paul will also tell you not to do this. I mean, it's pretty obvious that Paul disagrees with this move, because Paul will tell you, if you have an

unbelieving spouse, that you don't leave. And that's what this is about. Yeah, and here he's not even leave. It's like, no, divorce them and send them, the wives and their kids away to I guess been for themselves yeah which is a bummer in this day and this I mean that's a bummer today that's a real bummer back then yeah so

all that is a preface yeah are we going to get through this oh we got it yeah we got like 28 minutes plenty of time so Ezra 9 verse 5 says at the evening sacrifice I this is Ezra talking I rose from

my something So it's translated ESV as fasting. This is what's called a hopox. It just means the word occurs only once in the Bible. So maybe it's fasting, maybe it's something else. But anyway, he rose from something connected with his penitential reflections. With his garment, his cloak torn, so he's tearing his clothes. That happens, of course, a lot in scriptures with people who are mourning or people who are very upset about something.

He falls on his knees, he spreads out his hands to the Lord, his God. And here's what he says. So here's his prayer. It's a long prayer. Oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God. Now he starts out in first person. I am ashamed, my God. Now he's going to switch to plural.

So he is introducing it with his own prayer, but then he's going to incorporate himself into all of the nation. For our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt is mounted up to the heavens. from the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt and for our iniquities we our kings and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands to the sword to captivity to plundering to utter shame as it is today but now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the lord our god to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold the hebrew there is

like a a tent peg or a nail is kind of the idea so something holding holding them in place we'd be given a tent peg within his holy place that our god may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery for we are slaves yet our god has not forsaken us in our slavery but has extended to us his steadfast love his chesed before the kings of persia to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our god to repair its ruins and to give us well esv has protection uh literally it's a wall probably not meant like literally like nehemiah will build but rather just like you know he's given us protection he's he's walled us round about something like that in judah and in jerusalem so he starts out here and he's basically at this point he's just kind

of reviving uh remembering the past okay you know a lot of terrible things were done by our fathers and a lot of terrible things happened to us, rightfully so. God was just to send us into exile because our sins had mounted up to the heavens. But now God, in his grace, well, he's given us a second chance. He's given us this tent peg in the holy place. He's brightened our eyes. Now, he's saying things aren't wonderful because we're not free. We're not independent.

He says we're still slaves. so they're yeah they're back home but it's not like they have uh some kind of little davidic kingdom that they're developing they are under the persian overlords and they will be under the persian overlords just like they're going to be later under the the greek overlords or the syrian overlord the roman overlords so they're they're not some sort of independent little nation that has a chance to grow they're still uh part of the persian empire so but god has done all these things all right so he's he's done all this and now this is kind of a introduction to what he's going to say in in verses 10 and following he says and now oh our god what shall we say after this

for we have forsaken your commandments which you commanded by your servants the prophets saying now before i quote this when he says which you commanded by your servants the prophets in the plural what he's going to quote here is not found in any one prophet this is a this is a montage of words and phrases and ideas and themes that are lifted from all over the place exodus joshua second kings ezra is like flexing his uh yeah like i know the scriptures muscle here i mean he's yeah so he said i'm a student i'm a student i'm a i'm a scribe i know that i know the torah let me let me show you exactly what i'm going to do right here i'm about to put together like a highlight reel of prophetic utterances yeah and so i mean which is fine i mean the

scriptures do that all over the place you know sometimes when in the new testament when the scriptures or the prophets are quoted it's a montage there's you know pulling from here and there so there's nothing wrong i mean we all do that you and i do that preachers and teachers we all do that we're you know we'll say like the bible tells us blah blah blah and we'll just summarize yeah you know a lot of different parts of paul paul does this is a great encouragement to me when uh when paul is writing and sometimes he'll just be like as the scripture says and then like he sort of quotes it yeah he's paraphrasing and you're like what what like that's not like i like it when it's like a little bit wrong um because you know it makes you feel better because

you know that you do that like i don't know it's uh or even you'll say or in another place it says this that's a great that's great because that means that he can't remember exactly where it is either but he knows it's in there i do that all the time uh it's good yeah yeah it is a great encouragement maybe yeah these guys are quoting from memory yeah it's not they don't open up logos bible software they don't even open up you know their their bible they're not i mean what do you think they traveled around with all these scrolls and they can just unroll it here let me find that reference in isaiah so i can get it exactly it's not the way it worked you know so and maybe they're quoting from memory from the hebrew maybe they're quoting from memory from the from the greek from

the Septuagint. Uh, but it's fine. I mean, it's, this is not like modern quotation, uh, Chicago's manual of style kind of things where you better get it word for word. And you know, if somebody's misspelled something at S I C in parentheses or something, this is the way it works in the ancient world. So Ezra is doing nothing different than what many others have done that, that in, in kind of doing a montage but what he the way he's going to apply this is really where the issue issue comes to the head well this is so the dangerous part of doing something like this is when you take four or five different passages you know cut and paste them together and then say now let me apply what i have done to this situation like that's probably not the way

you don't want to do that like because i mean i could take four verses and make the bible say something it doesn't say yeah people do that all the time yeah that now that is dangerous like that's not that is not something you want to do yeah so i mean yeah it's fine everybody does kind of this grouping together of different passages in a summary paraphrastic sort of way but it's what you do with it yeah that matters so as is kind of a uh illustration of this so if you go to the second century church father erinnaeus he talked about how the heretics would do this He said that what the heretics do is they take a mosaic that's comprised, a mosaic of a king that's comprised of all these precious stones and jewels, and they disassemble it, and then they reassemble all these little parts of the mosaic into the image of a dog or a fox. So they're taking the same biblical text, but they're rearranging them into a different image.

Now, I'm not, let me be clear, not saying that's what Ezra does here, but I'm saying that sort of thing happens all the time. And you can take the Bible and you can put things together to make it say whatever you want to in either, you know, a slightly off-key sort of way or in a terribly wrong sort of way. So anyway, here's what Ezra was going to do. So by your servants of prophets saying, quote, the land that you're entering to take possession of it is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands. with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. Therefore, do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.

Well, there's nothing wrong with that quotation. I mean, that kind of is a good summary of the impurity of the land because of the abominations of the Amorites that we hear all the way back in the book of Genesis. And yes, the Israelites, when they were under the leadership of Joshua, entered the Promised Land, they were told not to intermarry, now this is important, with the inhabitants of that land. Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, all the ites. All right? Why? It was never for racial reasons. It was always for religious reasons.

Yeah, well, you know, they were like sacrificing their kids and stuff. So, yeah. Yeah, probably not a good idea to marry into that family. Yeah. It's not going to go well with you if that's what your wife is used to. So, don't take their daughters as wives for your sons, and don't give your daughters as wives for their sons. Makes sense.

So, everything will be good with you. Verse 13. this is now ezra going on he's kind of finished this this grouping of text and after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt seeing that you our god have punished us less than our iniquities deserved well that's certainly true and have given us such a remnant as this all this is leading up to to what he's about to say next so given our past given what you've said given that you've given us a second chance you didn't punish us like we deserved shall we break your commandments again and intermarry with the peoples who practice

these abominations this right here is super important this is where you know like what he's afraid of now is it justified or not i don't like i don't know but here you know exactly what the issue is is that you can underline this practice these abominations like this is a action problem right this is a worship problem that he is afraid of that's what he's afraid of yes yep that's what this all gets it's what it's what this all goes to yeah so shall we then break your commandments which we've argued is not happening but that's going to lead to these these abominations yeah so that that's a concern it's not the people it's the activity yeah yeah so but what if let's see here's what what if you happen to marry a woman who doesn't lead her

husband to practice these abominations in fact what if you marry you know an inhabitant of that land who happens to love yahweh and wants to raise you and your children in the fear and the admonition of yahweh what about those situations never ever once comes up it's not even addressed as a possible scenario here and and look there's there there's probably some wisdom in someone like ezra saying hey if you're gonna marry if we're gonna do any uh marrying over here you need to be real sure that we're not marrying people that are going to bring in idolatry because like that fear is well-founded yeah he's got a good reason to be afraid of that however that's different than if it's already happened and now there's children involved

yeah yeah vastly different which is i think the part of this that bothers me the most you know even if let's say in an alternate universe even if they had come to a compromise agreement saying okay listen we got a bunch of these marriages already in existence but let's put a stop to it no more if you're going to marry you got to marry a fellow israelite you know now i'm not saying that's right or wrong i'm just saying but what if okay well then at least then all the marriages that that exist would be intact all the kids be taken care of all the wives be taken care of and you can you know over time you can kind of work out whether that was right or wrong but if that would have been the compromise i've been like okay i can see

that but going to the extreme of forcing these men to end these marriages making the wives and the children just kind of fend for themselves that's where it was taking it too far well you could i can even wrap my head around deciding you're going to do this like okay pause all the marriages here's what we're doing here we're going to line you guys all up you're going to come in

you're going to explain what your worship practices are you're all in on Yahweh okay you can stay and then if some guy comes in his wife's like no I'm not all in on Yahweh I'm worshiping Yahweh but I'm also worshiping this that and the other thing is the answer really like

got a divorce or do you say like okay here's your option Like, if you're afraid of, like, a little leaven, leavening the whole loaf and all that kind of stuff, which is fair enough, why don't you just send the husband away with them? Like, that's the better option. You say, like, hey, you can't be a part of this community now because you've married—you don't make him divorced and have his children be fatherless. And what are you—that's not it. You say, well, here's the options. I mean, you either put away all those other gods and you get all in on Yahweh, or your family has to go elsewhere, like the whole thing.

You know, the closest actual equivalent, as far as kind of a practical situation like this, that I'm aware of, is in modern societies where polygamy is still allowed. Yeah. Polygamy is still practiced. And you will have situations. situations i mean i'm aware of some of these situations where uh say that we'll say that the dad the the husband will convert to christianity and bring his whole family into christianity well now as a pastor how are you going to deal with this situation well the situations that i'm aware of it's not like it's not like the pastor says to uh to the husband now you got five wives

but you can only have one, so you need to divorce the other four. And the nine kids, they've got to go too. Yeah, and all the children. No, they're basically brought into the church, and yeah, they're a polygamous household because that's what they were before they came into the faith. There's no divorce that's multiple divorces with now all these kids on their own that's forced upon this family

because that would violate the law of love. Yeah. So even in those situations, they are— You might tell them, hey, don't add any more wives. to your right that you and that's usually part of okay five's enough buddy or however many has all right no more all right uh you you've got you've got more than enough here so uh but yeah they take care of the entire family husband wives you know and all the kids okay so this is kind of finishing out chapter nine uh where we at here yeah would you not be

angry with us until you consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor need to escape oh lord the god of israel you are just for we are left a remnant that has escaped as it is today behold we are before you in our guilt for none can stand before you because of this and that's the end of end of ezra's prayer so from ezra's perspective that's kind of the situation he kind of goes over the history uh goes over the fear that that that would would happen with the abominations and then kind of ends i mean there's it's kind of a strange prayer in some ways because there's no there's not even any kind of plea for wisdom to know how to deal with this there's not a plea for forgiveness just kind of a it's just a confession uh that that ends really before it

seems like it that it should end just hey we are standing before you today in our guilt amen yeah He even says, like, I mean, if all this stuff is happening, would you not be upset? I mean, he's even—there's even, like, this projection a little bit that's happening. Like, surely you would be very upset. And he sounds, honestly, like, the more you read it, the more fearful he sounds. Like, this, like, you know, we've got this little tiny remnant, man. We've got this little thing, and man, like, he's so scared that God's going to stomp out this little thing, which is probably the reason why he's saying

yeah divorce all these women and you have to stay is because the thing is little and he doesn't want to be losing people but it's yeah it sounds like he's scared to death that this is like that God's going to basically take it all back yeah so

we'll see how they deal with it after this this is chapter 10 so Ezra prayed made confession weeping casting himself down before the house of God and it wasn't alone. All these people, great assembly, men, women, children, they gather around there. They're weeping bitterly. And then a guy by the name of Shekinah, we heard about him before, I think back in chapter eight, he was part of the group that came over with Ezra. So

Shekinah addressed Ezra. He says, we have broken faith. That's the Hebrew verb that I talked about last episode this has to do with committing sacrilege so uh ma'al ma'al we have uh committed sacrilege broken faith so this is a the ritual understanding with our god and married foreign women from the peoples of the land but even now he says there's hope for israel in spite of this this is the basis so this is the hope not that god will forgive or anything like that there's hope. Therefore, let's make a covenant with our God to put away

all these wives and their children. Dude, I hate it when people come up with covenants. I really don't like it. God makes covenants, and then he'll make a covenant with you and stuff. It's almost, I mean, it seems like it's universally

a terrible idea when you devise a covenant with God. You just come up with one. Like, here's what we'll do. We'll make a covenant with God. God never accepts that covenant well this covenant is based upon as we pointed out faulty exegesis and violating the law of love by divorcing these women and making their their children leave so that's that is again but you notice there's a way that's the basis of their hope you realize like it's not it's not good usually when when you when you're afraid that god is upset about something

And so you devise a—because what is a covenant? A covenant is a promise. And this is not how God works. I mean, God works with promise, that when he promises, God does not care about your promise. He does not believe your promise. He does not, okay? Because you are not a promise keeper. You don't do that.

So when you say, we're going to cut a covenant, I'm going to initiate this covenant with God, there's no way to know that god has accepted the terms like there's that's not a good idea uh to like yeah and maybe we can fix this if we just make a promise with god god nowhere puts his imprimatur on this i mean that no that should be stated explicitly it's not as if we're going to have you know fire come down from heaven and consume sacrifices on an altar or something like this it's there's not going to be any voice from heaven that says you guys did great. No. There's divine silence

throughout this entire process. Or it's not like this guy shows up and says, Ezra, good news, I was praying and God told me that he will cut this covenant with us, and here's the terms. This is not, he just says, hey, there's hope, here's what we'll do, we'll make a promise

to God. This is never, even if there's like a bunch of sin going on here, you making a promise to God is not how you deal with sin. It's not how you deal with breaking faith. You don't deal with breaking faith by making some kind of pledge to God. You just repent and get forgiven and ask him to work something out for good out of this bad situation.

That's what you do. You turn to the gospel. Okay, so moving on here. So we're going to put away the wives and the kids. according to the counsel of my lord that this lord in a in a smaller case l so according to the counsel of ezra and of those who tremble at the commandment of our god let it be done according to the law arise for it's your task we are strong we are with you be strong and do it so this is what uh shekinah uh urges ezra to do so ezra gets up and he makes all the leading

priests levites and all the israel take an oath that they would do as had been said so they take they take this oath so everybody's in agreement here this is what we're going to do verse 6 says ezra withdraws for a while he goes to the temple goes to the chamber of jehonanan spends the night he's fasting not eating bread or drinking water he's mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles and then there's a proclamation that goes throughout all the land that everybody's supposed to show up basically that if you don't come within the next three days then your property is going to be forfeited you're going to be banned from the exile so they're basically under threat forcing all the people from all these areas around jerusalem to come to jerusalem within this

three-day period so verse 9 says they all show up all these guys from judah and benjamin of course they are the predominant tribes that are still left they gather at jerusalem it's a terrible day because it's raining outside so they're sitting in the courtyard this open square before the temple and they're they're trembling because of everything is happening and because i mean they're sitting in rain yeah it's a it's just a it's almost like god said you know what i'm gonna make i'm gonna make this even harder for the i'm gonna make sure that it's just a downpour this day a muddy cold wet mess so in this context ezra stands up and says you broken faith that's our ritual word this you've you've committed sacrilege married foreign women increased the guilt of

israel so i want you to confess before god and do his will and here is how they define that will separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives now everybody who's there basically says okay it is so we'll do just like you've said but verse 13 is kind of funny but but listen there's a whole lot of us and it's raining we're we're standing here in the open this can't be done in one or two days so uh tell you what let our officials be our representatives and let everybody who's in all these cities who've married outside of israel come at the you know set up an appointment and and then come until the fierce wrath of god is turned away from us because of this so that's kind of what they agreed to now verse 15 tells us that you know

it wasn't like everybody agreed with this there was a guy by the name of jonathan and a guy by the name of uh yazeha and these guys alone are recorded as opposing this move on the part of ezra and everybody else so there was a minority report so i mean at least that was recorded it wasn't like everybody thought this was a fantastic idea there were a couple the guys at least who said no but all the others all the other support of them so to kind of wrap up the section of the exiles that's what they did ezra the priest he selects these heads of fathers houses by name and on the first day of the 10th month they sat down to examine this matter and by the first day of the first month they come to an end they went through all the guys who had

married married foreign foreign women now what we have from ezra 10 18 through 43 the the next to last verse of the chapter is a list of these guys so by name they were found some of the sons of priests and married foreign women they have them listed then levites and singers and and just basically various people in Israel. So the way the book of Ezra ends is basically by listing a bunch of guys who had married non-Israelite women among all the various sectors of Israelite society. And these guys then are forced, is that the right word? Or agree, whatever it is, they end up divorcing the non-Israelite women

and they had to send these women and their children away. And that's how the book of Ezra ends. Not a great ending to a biblical book. And just not a law solution to a law problem or a law solution to a perceived law problem is never the way to go. Yeah, I mean, you know, you have that verse,

let me do that thing where you just quote a verse and you don't know where it is where God is explicit hates divorce and look lots of people get divorced but a mass divorce

so you're having a ton of people do a thing that you know that God only wants you to do if it's absolutely necessary because he hates it I don't know man It seems like not the solution. And it's weird, too, because it does feel like a sort of—

when you say that you're going to make this covenant, it does almost seem like here's this great sacrifice. This mass divorce is like this sacrifice that you are asking God to accept. You're trying to appease Him so that He doesn't stomp out your little remnant or whatever. And you feel like if this was something that God had wanted to happen or that he approved of, that he would have suggested it. That's usually the way it goes in Scripture, that if God desires something, he'll let you know.

Yeah, sure. He'll raise up a prophet. He'll do something. But as I mentioned a few minutes ago, there's divine silence here. There's no divine imprimatur upon this decision which was reached. You don't even get like a, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people because you don't even get nothing, not even that.

Which this still might be a very bad solution for the anger of the Lord being kindled, but you don't even have that stated. It's just telling you something that happened. Yeah, yeah. So one more illustration of Scripture where just because things happened the way they did or decisions were made the way they were

doesn't mean they were good. And certainly does not mean that they are a prescription for how the ongoing community of God should conduct itself. I mean, if anything, I think this demonstrates that hermeneutics based on fear, biblical interpretation based on fear, is not the way to go. And as you pointed out, Dan, that trying to deal with a real problem or a perceived problem by making promises to God that somehow is going to take care of his anger is never, ever the way to go. No, no.

Much better if you've actually sinned to confess your sins to God and to hear him forgive you for the sake of Jesus Christ, which is what the gospel is, where you don't do anything to take care of your sins. Jesus did it all. And he's not forgiving fake sins, but he's forgiving real sins with real forgiveness. And if you think that there's something that needs to be done, maybe ask him what he would like you to do. Yeah. but hey we uh you know i will say this dan i mean we promised to finish we did it and so and even though you know broadly speaking we're not promise keepers we did actually

for once in our life keep a promise we finished in one episode i like those two chapters i feel good about it i feel i feel good about it all right guys uh surprise surprise we'll be in nehemiah uh coming up next episode uh so we'll pick it up and see how the how this remnant is going to be faring uh as we continue this this little journey but uh that is ezra that is the sort of dark ending but uh it's the ending we got so we will see you next episode