Ezra 9:4

“Now when these things were done” looks back over Ezra 7–8: Ezra’s journey from Babylon under God’s protection, and the safe delivery of the king’s decree, the royal funds and the temple treasures. Everything outward had gone well. The very next thing Ezra hears is that the community itself has gone badly wrong, and the hard news lands all the more heavily after so much success.

Ezra was a priest and a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, and he had come with a commission from King Artaxerxes to establish that law and the temple worship among those who had returned (Ezra 7:6–10). These events are dated about 458 BC, in the reign of Artaxerxes I, some eighty years after the first exiles came home under Zerubbabel.

The princes, sarim in Hebrew, are the leading officials of the Jewish community in Jerusalem. They come to Ezra with a formal report, and their coming shows how grave and urgent the matter was. As verse 2 will reveal, some of the leaders were deep in the very sin being reported.

Verse 2 names the sin plainly: “they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons”. Men had married women of the surrounding peoples and had also taken them as wives for their sons, so the practice ran through whole families and into the next generation. The law had forbidden exactly this: “Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods” (Deuteronomy 7:3–4). Exodus gives the same warning, that the daughters of the land would lead Israel’s sons after their gods (Exodus 34:15–16).

The result is that “the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands”. Zeraʻ means seed, and from there offspring or descendants, here the line that runs back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Qôdesh means holiness, what is set apart and dedicated to God. Israel’s holiness came from the LORD’s covenant with them and his call to be distinct, and “holy seed” names the whole nation by that calling. By mingling with the peoples of the land they blurred the boundary God had drawn around them.

Ezra answers the news at once: “I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied.” The verb qâraʻ means to tear or rend, usually with force. He tears two pieces of clothing, his garment, beged, and his mantle, mᵉʻîyl, a robe that could be a more distinguished one. Then he pulls out the hair of his head and beard. The verb mâraṭ means to pluck off or to make bald.

Finally he “sat down astonied”. Shâmêm is used of a place left desolate and, of people, of being in deep shock, appalled. Ezra sits like a man stunned by the size of what he has heard, a relapse into the sin that had brought the exile, so soon after the return.

Ezra himself had taken no foreign wife, yet he grieves as one of the people and carries their shame as his own. The prayer that follows confesses the people’s sin before God (Ezra 9:5–15). Nehemiah grieved and prayed over his people in the same way (Nehemiah 1:4).

Ezra was soon joined: “Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel”. The word for those who trembled, chârêd, speaks of fear, awe and deep concern. These were people whose consciences were struck by the report, because they knew what God had commanded and how serious it was to break it. They gathered round Ezra as a faithful remnant sharing his burden, and the movement toward repentance began with them.

“Words” is dâbâr, word or speech, and in other places matter or thing. Here it means what God had spoken in his law, with all its authority. To tremble at it is a holy fear that comes from knowing God’s authority and holiness, and God prizes it: “to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).

They trembled “because of the transgression of those that had been carried away”. Gôwlâh means exile or captivity, and also the exiles themselves, the people who had been deported. The name recalls where these people had been and why. They had been carried away for sins of this kind, and having come home after that discipline they had fallen into them again. The sin of some weighed on the whole community, and those who feared God felt it together.

Israel’s call to be separate comes to its fullness in Jesus Christ. He is the one who is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26). We were “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1), and by his sacrifice he cleanses us from them, purges the conscience with his blood (Hebrews 9:14), makes us new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17) and presents us holy and blameless before God (Colossians 1:22). Peter gives the church Israel’s own titles, “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9), and calls it to holiness in the words of the law: “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15–16).

The separation God asks of his people in Christ is from sin, idolatry and ungodliness, and it belongs to all who are united to him by faith, whatever their descent. Jesus prayed for his disciples as people who remain in the world and are not of it (John 17:14–16), and Paul calls believers to be transformed by the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:2). Christ is making the church his pure bride, without spot (Ephesians 5:27), a people he has redeemed, purified and made zealous of good works (Titus 2:14). The princes and rulers of Ezra 9:2 led the people into sin, and Christ, the King and High Priest, leads his people in righteousness.

Ezra’s grief points to Christ as well. Ezra mourned sins he had not committed. Jesus, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), lamented over Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37), and though he knew no sin he was made sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). He trembled at every word of his Father in the sense that he obeyed it perfectly, even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The evening sacrifice was offered day after day, and Christ has put away sin once for all by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26).

These verses show what God’s word is worth to those who love him. Ezra, a scribe skilled in the law of Moses, heard that the people had set it aside, and he grieved as if over a death. God sees those who tremble at his word, as Isaiah says, and on that day they found one another around Ezra. The passage also shows that God holds leaders to account, for those who should have guarded the people were first in the trespass.

The scene ends at the hour of the evening sacrifice, the time God had appointed for his people to draw near to him. Ezra’s silent grief turned to confession there, before the God whose mercy he was about to plead. For us that hour points to the one sacrifice of Christ, through which guilty people come near to God and are made his holy people.