Learning Curve

“I hate divorce” God once said through his Old Testament prophet Malachi.

So it should sound odd that a priest named Ezra urged his fellow Jews to divorce their wives and send them and their children packing! Despite his shocking suggestion, Ezra had some outstanding credentials. A direct descendant of the very first high priest, Aaron, Ezra was intimate with the Law of Moses. God blessed Ezra because he not only read and studied the Word of God, he was faithful in obeying the Word of God.

Ezra lived in Babylon, once the capital of the Babylonian Empire, now under the control of Persia. Many Jews were taken captive when Babylon overran Jerusalem about 150 years earlier. Ezra asked the current king, Artaxerxes, if he could return to Jerusalem and clean up the Temple there and restore the Jewish method of worship. The king agreed and also sent his own gold and silver and a letter giving Ezra sweeping authority.

Ezra’s journey went smoothly. The returning exiles arrived in Jerusalem and offered tons of sacrifices – literally. They offered a sacrifice to God that included twelve bulls, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven male lambs, and twelve male goats. Everything was going so smoothly until they learned the truth. The new arrivals noticed that the old-timers had married indiscriminately. They had taken wives from groups like the Ammonites, Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites, Moabites, and the Perizzites! Only one small detail was overlooked – all those “ites” had been declared “off-limits” for centuries. God had continually warned the Hebrews through Moses against intermarriage! The learning curve had been ignored to their peril.

Ezra looked around at all the intermarrying and realized that the entire nation is in danger of being led into apostasy. What was at stake was nothing less than salvation of the world!  Huh?!  If there is no obeying God and believing generation, it wouldn’t be long before there is no Israel.  If there is no Israel, then there is no Messiah.  And if there is no Messiah, then there would be no salvation and the entire world remains in sin. This was a serious situation.   

When Ezra found out he was shocked. He tore his clothes, and then ripped hair out of his head and beard!  “O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.” Ezra 10:5 And then Ezra prayed.  While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites—men, women, children gathered around him and prayed, too.  No sermon had been preached.  No decree had been issued.  Yet a great assembly of people gathered and goes into mourning.  Why?  Because a single man prayed.  One of the guilty men actually proposed the remedy for the problem. A man named Shecaniah told Ezra they had been unfaithful to God and should make a new covenant and send all the women and children away.  Within 3 days all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered in Jerusalem and on the 12^th day Ezra stood up and told them they had been unfaithful in marrying foreign women and added to Israel’s guilt.  They made confession to the Lord and to do His will.  They separated from all their foreign wives.  The whole assemble did as Ezra proposed.  Ezra’s bitter pill cured the patient.