God’s Word for You

Ezra 9:8-12 Guard your doctrine closely

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, July 29, 2025

8 “But now, for a short time, the LORD our God has been gracious in leaving us a remnant and giving us a space in his holy place, and so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our slavery, 9 for slaves we are. But our God has not deserted us in our slavery. He has shown us favor before the eyes of the kings of Persia: He has given us relief to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall for Judah and Jerusalem.

Ezra recalls the greatness of God in rescuing his people in former times. The people of Israel were brought to the land by God’s design, beginning with the call of Abraham, then the promises to Isaac and Jacob, which Jacob took so much to heart that he was reluctant to leave even when there was a famine in the land. The Lord appeared to him at Beersheba before he left the land to say, “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will surely bring your people back again” (Genesis 46:3-4). Now the Lord had brought back the exiles from Babylon and from Persia.

Ezra emphasizes the smallness of the people, and the brief time that they had been back. He says that they are just a yathed, a “tent peg” or a peg driven into a wall to hang a shirt on; Israel was now the smallest part of the tent, with the smallest area of what was once Solomon’s vast empire of real-estate. But Ezra still concedes that they are still slaves. Why does he say that? Why talk that way? They have been released from their captivity, but they have not been released from their place in the Persian Empire. They still travel with the permission of the Persian King. They build with his permission, they worship with his permission. They are his subjects, and Ezra is under no illusion about it. They are his slaves, whether their toes are touching the swift, cool Jordan or squelching the warm Euphrates mudbank. They are still slaves to the Persians. But they had been brought back by the hand of God.

“By publishing and carrying out his edicts releasing the Jews (2 Chronicles 36:23; Ezra 1:1-2) Cyrus, stirred to this act by the Holy Spirit, confessed Israel’s God and glorifies his name before all the world, although he did not become an open proselyte to Judaism. But the Holy Spirit did his work through him, as he did through Balaam (Numbers 22-24), Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4) and Darius (Daniel 6)” (August Pieper, Isaiah II p. 170-171).

Permission might come from the Persian king, but the blessings all came from God: “Relief to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall for Judah and Jerusalem.”

10 “But now, O our God, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments 11 that you gave through your servants the prophets when you said: ‘The land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the filth of its peoples. By their detestable practices they have filled it with their impurity from end to end. 12 Therefore, do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters as wives for your sons. Do not seek their peace or their prosperity, not ever, so that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it to your children as an everlasting inheritance.’

Now Ezra quotes a doctrine that he knows the people should understand. The problem to some people is that there is no one verse or passage that says what Ezra says here. We hear this all the time from armchair theologians who think everything worth knowing should be a single sentence, a soundbite; no longer than a TikTok video. “Show me one passage that says that!” they splutter. But doctrine is seldom a matter of a single verse. It is almost always a matter for many passages, all relevant to the subject, which taken together reveal God’s holy will. What Ezra says here is that the prophets warned about intermarrying with the people of the land, because it would lead to a falling away from faith (apostasy) for the people. Did any one of the prophets say that? No. But taken together, Moses and Solomon and some of the earlier and the later prophets said exactly that. Ezra may very well have had in mind passages of the Scriptures like these:

1, Deuteronomy 11:8-9. “Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, and so that you may live long in the land that the LORD swore to your forefathers to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.” Moses reminds Israel about God’s promises and his gifts, and that living in the land is also contingent on their obedience.

2, Joel 3:20. “Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem throughout all generations.” The promise of God, and his intention, was that the land would be possessed by the people for “uncountable time” and that generation by generation (Hebrew dor wedor) they would pass everything down to their children.

3, Proverbs 25:26 “Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked.” Solomon warns that error is right around the corner when good people begin to act like the wicked.

4, Leviticus 18:24-27 “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws… for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled.” Moses warns, right at the foot of Mount Sinai, that the land of Canaan was a land filled with wicked people who defiled it, and he was going to empty it of all those nations so that his people could possess it without being tempted by their idolatry.

5, Jeremiah 44:4. “I kept sending my servants the prophets to you again and again, saying, ‘Do not do this detestable thing that I hate.’” As late as the days of the exile, God’s prophets were still warning the people about the Lord’s will; his laws do not change. What was an abomination in the days of Moses was still an abomination in the days of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.

6, Exodus 34:15. “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices.” Moses also warned the people not even to try to get along with those wicked nations. “They will invite you” was the beginning of every temptation.

Taken together, these and many other similar passages should have told the returning exiles not to mingle with or marry the people of the land. But they did it anyway. They acted as if they were ignorant, but they simply chose to ignore God’s commands.

But those commands were about marriage; who not to marry. What can be harder than telling my own heart not to crave what it craves; not to love what it loves? A woman might turn away from a man because she doesn’t think he’s rich enough, or young enough, or handsome enough, or she doubts he will be faithful, or a hundred other reasons. A man might turn away from a woman because he’s not attracted to her, or doesn’t trust her, or a hundred other reasons. But to be in love, and to say, this isn’t what God wants, so we should not love, not marry? This is a cross to carry. A heavy, hard cross. A painful cross. Only Christ himself can help anyone to carry such a cross. There are frightful, heart-breaking applications for this in our lives even now. We will need to listen to more of Ezra’s prayer and we will need to keep trusting in our Savior for help. But the prayer for the moment is simple and familiar: “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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