Ezra 9
Ezra's Prayer
Ezra Alerted of Israel's Corruption (1-2)
After Ezra worshiped at the Temple, some of the leaders of the Jews approached him and reported that the exiles, who had returned from Babylon some 75 years prior, had nurtured some pagan worship practices. They were mixing in some of the abominable pagan worship customs of the surrounding nations.
What motivated such a practice was the intermarriage with foreign women. Ezra, with some of the leaders, recognized that this intermarriage of the holy race with foreign women was a threat to the uniqueness of God's people. Ezra discovered that even some of the rulers and leaders were engaging in the practice of intermarriage and were mixing foreign worship practices with the worship of Yahweh (1-2).
Ezra Mourns (3-5)
Ezra immediately began to grieve passionately by tearing his garments, but he was also indignant, shown in his pulling his hair from his head and beard (3). As Ezra grieved and expressed his disgust at Israel's actions, others who feared God and His word gathered with him in a show of agreement (4). After a day of grieving and disgust, Ezra rose, fell on his face in humiliation, and stretched out his heart to God for help in prayer during the evening sacrifice (5).
Ezra Prays (6-15)
Ezra prayed a model prayer for revival. His great concern was the people of Israel losing their distinction as a holy people and, in losing their sense of distinction, vanishing from the earth as a people with a purpose from God. Ezra's prayer was the prayer of a man desperate for God to revive love and covenant relationship in the hearts of people in whom it had grown cold.
In prayer, Ezra acknowledged:
his embarrassment about the guilt associated with Israel's sinful actions (6)
that Israel had a history and pattern of sinning by forsaking covenants—this having caused their continual defeat, captivity, and plundering (7)
that Yahweh had given Israel a gracious second chance by sending the remnant of Jews to Jerusalem to be God's holy people and to restore them to their holy purpose (8)
that they had been slaves in Babylon but were not forsaken; instead, Yahweh showed His steadfast love in returning them to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple, restore worship, and be a cause of hope on the earth (9)
Ezra then changed his prayer from general and historical to a specific confession of the vastness of Israel's then-present sin.
In prayer, Ezra also acknowledged:
the specific nature of the exiles’ sin in abandoning God's commands (10)
that the Jews, having abandoned God's command, could not recognize pagan practices as obscene and horrific (11)
the Jews as so spiritually apathetic and casual that they indulged in the fatal practice of intermarriage, disobeying the ancient commandments and the prophets
that through intermarriage, they had begun to seek peace and prosperity in life apart from Yahweh and with disregard for their legacy (12)
that God had allowed less punishment than Israel deserved for their history of turning their backs on faithfully following Yahweh's commands (13)
that the exiles were again replaying the old scene of ignoring God's commandments and joining in the abominable practices of worship, apart from Yahweh as the ultimate center of life
that the exiles were dangerously close to abandoning their place as the last remnant of hope for the world (14)
Yahweh as just
the remnant of Israel as guilty before the Lord (15)
In this prayer, Ezra recognized that the remnant, who had returned before him to Jerusalem, had left their trust in Yahweh, left Yahweh as the ultimate center of their lives, and disobeyed His word. He recognized that the returning exiles were the remnant of Israel—God's last lamp on the earth to show and demonstrate His nature to the world. Their light was flickering and in danger of going out.
What caused Ezra to pray so fervently was the knowledge that, while the returned exiles worshiped Yahweh, they looked like pagan worshipers in heart and practice—mixing the worship of many gods, including Yahweh, to liberate them to fulfill their lusts.
The returned exiles no longer bore any distinctive features of holiness or of a people whose ultimate love was Yahweh, hence the intensity of Ezra's prayer—he was praying for the life of Israel.
Ezra did not end his prayer by asking for forgiveness; Ezra ended his prayer by admitting guilt. Ezra knew that for repentance to be genuine, it must be accompanied by fruit or actions proving that the mind and heart have repented.
Ezra 10
Dissolving Foreign Marriages
Shechaniah's Encouragement (1-8)
As Ezra prayed, confessed, wept, and threw himself down before Yahweh, God's Spirit moved at a revival pace, bringing together a great mass of people—men, women, and children. As they gathered, they wept bitterly in concert with Ezra (1).
Ezra's praying became so contagious that it caused Shechaniah to speak up and admit to Ezra that his assessment of the sin of the exiles was true and right. Shechaniah admitted the exiles had broken faith and rebelled against God's ways by intermarrying with foreign women. He then encouraged Ezra to have hope (2).
Shechaniah offered Ezra a bold plan that would restore hope to the nation.
The plan involved:
the exiles’ making a covenant with God to divorce their foreign wives and the children of their foreign wives
further following the wise counsel of Ezra in making the covenant to divorce their wives
divorcing their foreign wives according to the Law (Deuteronomy 24:1) of Moses (3)
Shechaniah's counsel was daring because once any nation worshiped foreign gods, they also began to perform monstrous and abhorrent acts. Corruption in worship and ultimate corruption in culture and behavior were the historical norm. Allowing the priesthood, the spiritual teachers of the nation, to corrupt their own worship with foreign marriages would eventually lead to national corruption of worship and national disaster.
Further, the teaching influence of foreign mothers upon the children of the priests would lead the next generation of priests into corruption, with the likely result of destroying the Jewish remnant as God's shining light on the earth.
Before judging this action as being too harsh, it should also be understood that to marry these foreign women, Jewish men had divorced their Jewish wives and sent them away with their children (Malachi 2:10-16). The proposal in this chapter from a worldly perspective can appear cruel, but no doubt, the first wives of Jewish husbands were being discarded for the pagan and lustful wives of the foreign nations.
Shechaniah then called Ezra to arise from his anguish, be strong, and lead the cause with the assurance that his actions would be backed by those grieving with him (4). Ezra rose and brought the whole company of priests and Levites into an oath to commit to Shechaniah's counsel (5).
Ezra, thus strengthened by Shechaniah's counsel and encouragement, retired to one of the chambers of the Temple to continue fasting and praying. He mourned deeply over the unfaithfulness of the exiles (6). He then came out of the seclusion of the Temple chamber and sent a proclamation throughout Palestine for all the exiles to meet at Jerusalem in three days. Failure of any to assemble would result in the seizure of their property and their banning from among God's covenant people (7-8).
The Assembly (9-15)
The exiles gathered within three days in the open square before the house of God, in the heavy and cold December rains (9). With the rain pouring down, Ezra stood and proclaimed the sin of the exiles:
First, they had broken faith with Yahweh and were not treating Him as ultimate in their lives.
Second, they had taken foreign women in marriage, grafting into their affections a heart for other gods (10).
The rain was heavy and Ezra's remarks were short as he, in essence, accused the whole nation of intermarriage. All stood guilty because some married foreign women and others tolerated the illicit marriages as acceptable to Yahweh.
Ezra then called upon the exiles to confess their sin, commit to Yahweh's will, and separate themselves from the lustful and selfish behavior of the people of the land, including pagan foreign wives (11).
The assembly quickly informed Ezra that they desired to repent and do what Ezra was commanding, but the people who were married to foreign women were many. Complicating the matter was the heavy rain, which made it impossible for the exiles to stand in the bitter cold for the amount of time it would take to resolve the matter (12-13).
The assembly turned into a sort of congregational board meeting in response to Ezra's demands.
First, they made a motion for officials to be appointed in every village to hear every foreign marriage case.
Second, they made a motion that these cases be resolved in such a way as would please Yahweh and turn away His displeasure (14).
Only two voted against the motion, along with two non-voting members who supported the two negative votes (15).
Marriage Court (16-17)
Ezra immediately selected family leaders to study each case of intermarriage to determine which foreign wives had become genuinely converted and which foreign wives had not. The committee took over two months (December 29 to March 27) to study each case, and the remainder of the book of Ezra lists their findings. They validated the genuine converts’ marriages and mandated the dissolution of the ingenuine converts’ marriages (16-17).
The List of Marriages to Unconverted Wives (18-44)
Ninety-six cases of marriages were found in the general population of Israel to foreign wives (25-44). Seventeen priests were involved in the practice (18-22), and ten Levites and Temple workers were married to unconverted wives (23-24). This means there were 113 cases total—a small percentage of the total population, but enough to make Ezra realize that ultimate disaster was impending if left unaddressed.
When totaling all the cases, the priests, Levites, and Temple personnel represented 25 percent of marriages to foreign women. The high percentage of priests, Levites, and Temple personnel engaged in marriage to pagan women was the issue so gravely affecting Ezra.
Those found married to foreign unconverted women committed to divorcing their wives and offering the appropriate sacrifices for their guilt (19). Wholehearted worship of Yahweh was restored.
Psalms 120-134 are all “Pilgrimage Songs” and were written to be sung by the Jews on their way up to Jerusalem for the three feasts held there each year [the feasts: Passover, Pentecost, Booths]. Ten of the Psalms are anonymous, four are attributed to David (122, 124,131,133), and one to Solomon (127)].
I have written these chapter devotionals as Jesus would have sung them and heard them as He was going to Jerusalem to celebrate feasts as a Boy, as a Man, and then ultimately in His final ascent to Jerusalem as the Passover culminated at Calvary. I will especially let these Psalms flow from Jesus’ own lips as we imagine a bit of what might have been going through His mind as He walked His disciples to that city 3,800 feet above sea level—the city in these Psalms referred to as Jerusalem and Zion.
Some imagine these Psalms were written for Solomon's Temple, each Psalm written for the fifteen steps leading up to the inner court—one Psalm at a time sung by the Levitical choirs accompanied by musicians as the priest made his way up each step.
Others imagine the Psalms were written for the exiles returning from Babylon to Jerusalem. Still others place them at 445 B.C. during Nehemiah's time, after the walls were built, when the Jews ascended to the temple for the Feast of Tabernacles.
Whenever these Psalms were written, they became songs sung by Pilgrims moving toward Jerusalem for one of the three feasts of Israel.
The Psalm of the Suffering Pilgrim
The Psalmist's Prayer (1-2)
If this Psalm was written in Nehemiah's day, as it may have been, then the Psalmist would have been saying something like this: “In the distress of the city of Jerusalem in shambles, I called to Yahweh, and He answered.” Nehemiah recognized that when he had asked Yahweh to send him to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, Yahweh had listened and granted him full authority to rebuild (1).
Nehemiah called out to Yahweh in distress again, after his return to Jerusalem, when adversaries were lying and opposing the rebuilding work. Those of the opposition were denying Israel's very identity and relationship to Yahweh. Further, they were reducing Israel's mission to an act of insurrection and minimizing it to a dream they could never finish because they were a feeble flock of “has-beens” and “wannabes.” One of the primary adversaries, Sanballat, and his hoard of liars, afflicted Israel constantly with their cursed exaggerations. The menacing threats and lies made their way into the minds of some of the Jews returned-from-exile. Eventually, these lies formed on the lips of these Jews, who uttered them and expressed doubt in God.
So it goes with those who become squatters and forget they are pilgrims—the deceptions of the world begin to take hold in their minds as truth and then form lies on their lips, too.
The Psalmist does not define the exact person or people with lips that lied. Both “lips” and “tongue” are singular in Hebrew. The Psalmist could well be saying, “Deliver me, Yahweh, from my lips, from the lie on my tongue that deceives me.”
The mission of those who make a home in this world is clear: they seek to get by, find meaning and fulfillment, discover identity, please the body, discover love, and be known. The mission of the pilgrim searches to find home in worship—the unleashed, without-limits worship of Yahweh.
The person who has made a home in this world says, “If only this …,” “Wait until the next breakthrough …,” “If I just get a pay raise …,” or, “If only I had that happen.”
The pilgrim discovers, “It's all a lie, for the world told me how to find my identity without telling me about my origin—Creation and my Father. The world told me how to please my body without telling me my body was a dwelling of the Holy Spirit. The world left so much out, and I listened and spoke lies myself. I became a squatter, but I want to return to being a pilgrim.”
This is at the heart of the Psalms of Ascent: one step at a time, contemplating how one moves from being a squatter to being a pilgrim.
Jesus sings this song for us. On His last trip to Jerusalem, when He became the Passover Lamb, He sang this Psalm with His disciples, mouthing the words, “Deliver Me from lying lips and deceitful tongues.” Jesus, in and with His disciples, may have been singing this prayer, meaning something like this, “Keep us, Your pilgrims, as we enter My hour. In the distress of this moment, Father, let My (our) home in worship be My (our) mission and My (our) heart. Don't let the stain of any lie corrupt the hearts of those who pilgrim with Me.”
The Psalmist's Remedy (3-4)
The Psalmist then asks what should be done as a remedy to a lying tongue (3).
The reply of the Psalmist comes with the keen edge of death: “Let the lying tongue be shot and killed with the warrior's arrow and then let it burn in the coals of a broom tree.” This is a metaphoric way of saying, “Let the lying tongue renounce the lies of the squatter, the lies of those who make their home in this world. Oh, tongue, renounce this world as home and make a home in Yahweh and the worship of Yahweh.”
Jesus renounced loving His own safety, His own bodily comfort, for the rich pilgrimage of worship and being home in Yahweh (4).
The Psalmist's Inner-Conflict (5-7)
“Woe to me,” says the Psalmist, “if I make my home distant from God (Meshech/Russia) or make my home in the wandering lust of whatever I want (Kedar/wandering Bedouin Tribes)” (5).
The Psalmist knew those who lived distant (Meshech) from Yahweh and those who lived meandering for their own desire (Kedar) would have no peace (6).
“For when I live among them and long for peace, and seek to speak for peace with my tongue,” the Psalmist says, “it creates conflict. When I have made my home in this world and seek for the peace of this world, I end up creating strife” (7).
Jesus, the Psalmist Singer, when singing this Psalm, was crying out that He had no desire to be distant from God nor roam after His own desire; He had dwelt too long with power-grabbers who hated peace. He was going to Jerusalem and would speak peace, and His kind of peace—heavenly peace—would incite in those peace-haters a war against God Himself.