Ezra 10

Notice the shift in tense from Ezra 9. There, Ezra is doing the talking. And he’s writing in the first-person. Now in chapter 10 we have a narrator, using the third-person style to describe a messy job: ordering 113 Jewish men to divorce their non-Jewish wives and send them away with their children. Scholars debate whether Ezra wrote this. Some wonder if it’s the work of an editor upset about his son marrying a lady who was one golden calf and two porkchops shy of kosher. Or for some other reason. Yet, many say it’s Ezra’s story, whether he wrote it or not. Either way, it’s tough for some folks to picture Jesus telling the men to show their ladies and their children the front door. Men who would do that would want to be Jews pretty badly.

Shecaniah almost bullies Ezra. He pushes the priest into ordering everyone who married non-Jewish women to divorce them and send them away with their children. Some scholars wonder if Shecaniah was looking out for himself. His father, Jehiel, is listed among the 113 Jewish men in the group who are married to non-Jews (10:26). Perhaps his father had two wives and Shecaniah was the son of his Jewish wife. Shecaniah may have guaranteed himself a better inheritance with his half-brothers gone. And he may not have liked his half-mother much, either. Win, win. Until his dad got home from the meeting.

It’s unknown who this person is. Some guess that he lived near the Temple, where Ezra had been, and he may have been one of the Temple workers.

The tribes of Judah and Benjamin were the main Jewish groups the Babylonian invaders had exiled in 586 BC. These tribes made up the southern Jewish nation of Judah. The northern Jewish nation of Israel, with the other tribes, were exiled long before that, in 722 BC, by Assyrian invaders. They became known as the Lost Tribes of Israel. They never seemed to come back in large groups. They apparently became assimilated into other cultures. Many southern Jews, however, returned home after one generation in exile. They had still maintained a sense of distinction as God’s people, though living in shameful punishment.

Chislev on the Jewish calendar runs from mid-November to mid-December.

Some would argue that “Stay away from foreigners” sounds pretty much the opposite of “love the outsiders, for you were outsiders in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19).

None of these four men is listed among the offenders. They may have preferred to deal with the offenders right away, rather than sending them home.

Tebeth runs from about mid-December to mid-January.

Nisan runs from about mid-March to mid-April.

In older lingo, the guilt offering was called the trespass offering, as in, “Forgive us our trespasses” or sins. In fact, scholars can’t seem to figure out what the difference is between a “sin offering” and a “guilt offering.” One guess is that guilt offerings were more serious and often involved making restitution. Leviticus 5:14-7:7 talks about when a person needs to make a guilt offering. Leviticus 7:1-10 talks about how to make the sacrifice.

“Gatekeepers,” guarded the entrances into the Temple courtyards.