Pagan Wives Put Away

A standing command from the Lord had been NOT to intermarry with pagans. It always leads to the watering down of true worship and also to the adaptation of pagan practices within the Israelite culture. Nevertheless, the exiles who had returned from Persia were guilty of repeating the mistake their ancestors had made. A list of the offenders is given in chapter 8 and includes 113 families, which is quite small in regard to the estimated 29,000 families represented (remember that 50,000 people had returned from exile with Zerubbabel nearly 100 years earlier). When calculated mathematically, this equates to .4% of the population. But it was an egregious sin, even moreso because several of the priests and Levites were involved.

In sincere repentance before the Lord, a solution was proposed to put the pagan wives away, which ezra agreed to. However, the text never states that this was a directive from God. It was simply the people's solution to the mess they had created. Some have attempted to use this passage as an endorsement for Biblical divorce, but this is contrary to what the rest of Scripture says. It was either a solution not condoned by God or perhaps the fulfillment of a cryptic passage regarding divorce from Deuteronomy 24. It reads "If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her..." essentially, divorce is permissible. Scholars have not known how to interpret the meaning of "finds something indecent about her" as the most obvious assumption would be adultery, which was punishable by death, not divorce. Some have speculated that it may refer to a birth defect or ceremonial uncleanness, but being a pagan could fit just as well.

Regardless of what happened in this isolated situation, we know God's heart with regard to divorce as plainly stated in in Malachi 2:16, "I hate divorce". Allowances are made in both the Old and New Testaments for certain circumstances, but this text should not be used to condone the practice outright.

Tomorrow's reading: Neh. 3:1-7:3