Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ezra · About this commentary
A Covenant Proposed
Ezra 10:1-8
1 Now while Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before God’s house, there was gathered together to him out of Israel a very great assembly of men and women and children; for the people wept very bitterly. · WEB
The proposal to dissolve the marriages comes from someone other than Ezra, and the law it appeals to is not quoted.
Ezra is still on the ground. While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before God's house, there was gathered together to him out of Israel a very great assembly of men and women and children; for the people wept very bitterly.
He has proposed nothing. His prayer had asked for nothing Ezra 9:15, and what draws the crowd is the sight of him rather than any summons.
The proposal comes from a man named once and never mentioned again: Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered Ezra. He begins with agreement — we have trespassed against our God, and have married foreign women — and then says the one hopeful thing anyone has said since the report arrived: yet now there is hope for Israel concerning this thing.
Then the plan: let's make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives and those who are born of them, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God. Let it be done according to the law.
Three things about that sentence deserve to be stated exactly.
It attributes the measure to the counsel of my lord, meaning Ezra — who has not counseled it, and whose recorded words to this point are a confession without a petition. Shecaniah is invoking an authority for a proposal that authority has not made.
It includes the children — those who are born of them — which the report about the marriages had not raised Ezra 9:2.
And it closes with according to the law, without naming a text. The law it points toward forbids contracting such marriages and gives its reason as the turning of sons to other gods Deuteronomy 7:3–4. No passage is quoted, in this chapter or anywhere in the book, that prescribes dissolving marriages already made.
Verse 4 is pressure rather than argument: arise, for the matter belongs to you and we are with you. Be courageous, and do it.
Ezra then acts, and what he does is administer an oath: he made the chiefs of the priests, the Levites, and all Israel to swear that they would do according to this word. The commitment binds them to Shecaniah's proposal.
And immediately afterward he withdraws to a room and didn't eat bread or drink water, for he mourned. Nothing here reads as a victory.
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