Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.’
Ezra has learned that God's people have married into the surrounding nations. Priests and leaders led the way. In his prayer he quotes God's own words back to Him. This verse is the heart of that quotation. It holds a command about marriage, a warning about seeking the good of the nations nearby, and a promise for those who obey.
The command Ezra is quoting
Ezra does not invent a rule for the crisis in front of him. He reaches for what God had already said, and those who gathered to him had learned the same thing from him.
H. L. RossierThe first effect of Ezra's self-humbling is to gather around him those who tremble at the words of God. They are marked by what they have learned under Ezra's guidance. Through him they know the word of God, and in it they have found the character of God, who can in no way tie Himself to impurity. Has He not said, "Be holy, for I am holy" (Lev. 11:44)?
What made these marriages so serious
Marriage can look like a private matter. One writer shows what an Israelite gave up by marrying outside the nation.
William Kelly"You have broken faith," he says, "and have married foreign women." For an Israelite, as far as the people were concerned, this was the great mark of falling away. It was falling away from God, in taking a foreign god. It was falling away from the people, in taking foreign wives. It meant completely giving up their holy place of separateness to the Lord.
Never seeking their peace or prosperity
The command does not stop at marriage. It also rules out working for the comfort of the nations nearby. One writer applies this to believers today, and then adds what has changed since Ezra's day.
Leslie M. GrantEzra went on in his prayer to recall that God had warned Israel not to intermarry with the nations of the land. God had even warned them not to seek the peace of those nations — that is, not to make them comfortable about living together. This is a warning for believers today. We are not to marry unbelievers. We are not to make unbelievers feel that there is no difference between us and them. Today, though, we have a positive gospel for unbelievers. We seek to win them to the Lord, so that they may be saved and share the same blessings we have.
The promise, and what losing it cost
The verse ends with a promise of three things: strength, the good of the land, and an inheritance for the children. An earlier generation lost all three.
H. L. RossierTo join themselves to the nations was to give up being set apart for Him. Ezra's companions had valued this holiness, and it had guided them up to that day (8:28). This was the very thing their predecessors had failed to keep. Such alliances — which for us match worldliness — had taken them over. They spread like gangrene from the priests and leaders of the people down to the common people themselves. They had forgotten that when separation goes, three great things go with it: strength, the enjoyment of the good things of the land of Canaan, and a lasting inheritance for themselves and their children (v. 12).
Ezra says "we"
Other people broke the commands named in this verse. Yet Ezra's prayer never sets him apart from the guilty.
F. B. HoleOne striking feature runs through the whole confession. He identified himself with the people, and confessed the evils as though they were his own. From start to finish he says "we" and "us", where we might have expected "they" and "them". He also owned that the evils in front of him were old sins coming back to life — sins that had stained his people from the very beginning, or, as he put it, "since the days of our fathers". What made it worse was this: they were repeating those sins after God had shown such mercy. He had already freed them from the consequences their former sins had brought.
Confession that moves to action
Confession is not the end of the matter. One writer warns about praying when action is what is needed.
The Christian's FriendAnd yet how often Satan deceives the Lord's people when evil has come out into the open. He suggests, through one person or another, "Let us pray about it." We must confess our sins. But even then we confess only as we seek grace and strength to deal with the evil and to separate ourselves from it. In this chapter Ezra lies before the Lord, owning his people's guilt. In the next chapter we see him acting with energy against the sin he had confessed, refusing to rest until he had put it away.
Summary
- Command — Ezra prays God's own words back to Him. Those who stood with him trembled at what God had said. They had learned that He cannot tie Himself to impurity.
- Cost — Marrying into the nations meant giving up their separateness to the Lord. It was a double turning away: from God, and from His people.
- Loss — When separation went, three things went with it: strength, the good of the land, and the inheritance left to their children.
- Reach — The ban on seeking the nations' peace warns against blurring the line. Today the gospel goes out to win outsiders into the same blessing.
- Response — Ezra confessed as "we", not "they". Then he acted, refusing to rest until he had put the evil away.