Context No. 3679 of 4322 · Ezra

Ezra 10:25-29: in context

25Of Israel: Of the sons of Parosh: Ramiah, Izziah, Malchijah, Mijamin, Eleazar, Malchijah, and Benaiah. 26Of the sons of Elam: Mattaniah, Zechariah, Jehiel, Abdi, Jeremoth, and Elijah. 27Of the sons of Zattu: Elioenai, Eliashib, Mattaniah, Jeremoth, Zabad, and Aziza. 28Of the sons of Bebai: Jehohanan, Hananiah, Zabbai, and Athlai. 29Of the sons of Bani: Meshullam, Malluch, Adaiah, Jashub, Sheal, and Jeremoth.

This is part of a long, sobering list of men who had married foreign wives, contrary to God's covenant, and who now, under Ezra's leadership, committed to separate from these marriages. It is a painful chapter, and we read it with real sensitivity to the human cost involved.

The deeper concern behind the reform was spiritual: these foreign marriages had drawn Israel toward the idolatry of the surrounding nations, the very thing that had brought disaster before. The list names those willing to make a costly, painful correction in order to restore the community's faithfulness to God. Whatever the hard particulars, the enduring principle is the seriousness with which God's people took faithfulness to him, and their willingness to make difficult, costly changes to remove what compromised their devotion. Sometimes returning to faithfulness requires painful correction of the very choices that led us astray. The names recorded here belong to people who were willing to pay that cost for the sake of their devotion to God.

Am I willing to make difficult, costly corrections to remove from my life what compromises my devotion to God, taking faithfulness to him with real seriousness?

Sources

Ezra 10:25: "Of Israel: Of the sons of Parosh: Ramiah, Izziah, Malchijah, Mijamin, Eleazar, Malchijah, and Benaiah."
Ezra 10:11: "Now therefore make confession to the LORD... and do his pleasure; and separate yourselves from the peoples of the land, and from the foreign women."
Ezra 10:44: "All these had taken foreign wives."