God’s Word for You
Ezra 10:16-17 Marriage and divorce
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, August 3, 2025
16 So that is what the exiles did. Ezra the priest selected men, heads of fathers’ houses, according to families, each of them identified by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the cases. 17 By the first day of the first month they had finished dealing with all the men who had married foreign wives.
The process took three whole months. Now, we’re going to see in the remainder of the chapter that there were 110 men who had married foreign wives. Someone might think, it took them 90 days to judge 110 cases? That’s not a very quick pace. But that isn’t the right equation. There were 110 guilty verdicts; men who were required to divorce their foreign wives. But we don’t have any idea how many cases were judged; how many marriages were examined. To be thorough, it seems likely that Ezra and the elders would have judged every marriage of the exiles that had taken place since they returned from Persia—or perhaps even those that had happened in Persia. In most cases it would have been a matter of exploring the wife’s genealogy. If she could prove that she was an Israelite, fine. If not, there was a problem. Perhaps there was a system of using witnesses to vouch for a girl’s family when possible, but we simply don’t know.
It’s fair to ask a question here. Doesn’t God consider divorce to be a sin? Yes. And also no. In marriage, the will of God is that the man and woman will be one flesh, that is married, for life. God himself brings a marriage to an end with death. “By law a woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage” (Romans 7:2). However, if one member of a marriage sins by being unfaithful, either by deserting the other, or committing adultery, or abandoning the marriage by treating their spouse as a punching bag or other abuse, then the wronged spouse can end the marriage in divorce, even though the Lord hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). That same verse in Malachi is one of the places where God says “I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment.” Therefore God brings violence and other abuse into the category of unfaithfulness and abandonment. And Jesus also says, “Anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress” (Matthew 5:32).
But what about this case in Ezra? This was something unique to Israel. It does not apply to Gentiles or to the Christian church. These marriages with the foreign nations were forbidden in the Law of Moses: “Do not form marriage alliances with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons, and do not take their daughters for your sons, because they will turn your sons away from following me, and they will serve other gods” (Deuteronomy 7:3-4).
The prophet Malachi (who came on the scene just after Ezra’s time) also condemns the priests for being leaders in this sin. He reports the Lord’s words: “You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and crying, because there is no longer any favorable response to your offering, and God is not pleased with anything from your hand. So you ask, ‘Why is this happening?’ This is why—because the Lord is a witness in the case between you and the wife you married when you were young, because you have betrayed her—though she was your partner, the wife with whom you made a covenant!” (Malachi 2:13-14).
Dr. John Brug explains in clear and simple words: “Ezra’s action of dissolving these mixed marriages was more comparable to telling someone to stop living in an adulterous relationship which was wrong from the start than forcing someone to dissolve a valid marriage” (People’s Bible: Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther p. 61).
When people today make choices that wreck and ruin their marriages and lives, they hurt many more people than just themselves. Sadly, their lives become another example of what can go wrong, what not to do. But there is forgiveness. Malachi also brought this message from the Lord: “For you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise, and there will be healing in its wings” (Malachi 4:2). And the Psalm says: “God sets the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6). Don’t give up hope; our God is the God of hope.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.