Ensign: Ezra In Time to Put Away

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3





AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS                                           19 February 2016


[Once in a while it's a good idea to study deeper some of the acts of the past and ideas of now that you're criticizing. Did that in my blog Wednesday with the tenth chapter of Ezra, implying that "ethnic cleansing" as we know it today, while it didn't necessarily have its start here, got a big help. And since the study I'm citing, from The Persian Trilogy by ... me (ISBN 9781489502254) refers you to several other parts of the Old Testament book, I'm going to leave you with the study I wrote -- and actually learned a thing or two from! I'd forgotten about the service in the rain too. David]


“Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children: for the people wept very sore.”  The opening verse of the tenth chapter of Ezra brings out an important point, one of the components of a well-rounded prayer.  Ezra CONFESSED, not because he personally had done wrong – though like all of us he had sin in his life – but that he was willing to identify with the transgressions of his own people who had intermarried and otherwise mingled God’s chosen people, the Jews God’s chosen people, with the people surrounding them practically since their ancestors had left Egypt a thousand years ago.  And so heartfelt was this prayer – please read Ezra chapter nine verses six through fifteen for it – that the people who heard and saw him lead the prayer also wept.  They wept so much that attention was called to their own particular sin that would be a tough one to give up.  It would be tough because those who had to give up faced the fruits or results of that sin every day.

 

When Shechaniah the son of Jehiel one of the sons of Elam – we saw back in chapter two verses fifty-nine through sixty-three how important it was to trace your family line – in verse two speaks for the people and says FIRST “We have trespassed against God”, he models for us today the point that first we have to admit to God that what we’re admitting is sin, an act that separates us from fellowship with God.  At the time the sin was certainly appealing to us, and it may take months, years, even decades to realize that the price of broken fellowship with God is ultimately too high to pay.  Even though Shechaniah’s name doesn’t come up later in the chapter among those who married foreign (read non-God-worshiping, not necessarily ethnically foreign) wives, like Ezra in his prayer he’s willing to identify with his own people.  So Shechaniah says in verse three, the “hope in Israel” would be for all Israelite men to put away or divorce their foreign wives as well as the children of such marriages.  This sounds hard, this is hard, hence Ezra’s counsel being sought in verses three and four.

 

“Then arose Ezra, and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel, to swear that they should do according to this word.  And they swore.”  Some, I imagine in verse five, swore under their breath.  But Ezra wasn’t reconstructing Judah and Jerusalem – even though the kingdom of Israel hadn’t existed for three centuries, the people native to those areas were and are still called Israelites here because of their descent from Jacob the grandson of Abraham whose name was changed by God to Israel (the name means “prince with God” per Genesis 32:28) – in what he imagined was God’s plan for His people.  His journey to Johanan the son of Eliashib’s house from the house of God, where he neither ate nor drank but “mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away [in Babylon’s conquest of Judah and Jerusalem eighty years before]” in verse six doesn’t say he prayed there, but he could have after he’d heard Shechaniah’s confession.  You and I don’t make mention or usually remember how many times we pray a day.  In a matter of speaking, whenever we call to God it’s a prayer.

 

Certainly the proclamation made throughout Judah and Jerusalem in verse seven for everyone to come to Jerusalem in three days’ time came about as a result of seeking God’s will.  Pay attention to the wording of verse eight: “And that whosoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the elders, all his substance should be forfeited, and himself separated from the congregation of those that had been carried away.”  If someone and their family couldn’t arrive at Jerusalem in three days – an issue with consequences later in this chapter – that’s one thing, but outright refusal to come brought with it a very immediate consequence of sin.  Essentially, to be kicked out of the community, lose everything you have, and be unable to worship in the Temple ever again.  The people faced with this proclamation had a decision to make and only three days to make it.  The men of Judah and Benjamin – the two tribes of Israel that comprised the majority of the people of what had been the kingdom of Judah – gathered in Jerusalem on the twentieth day of the ninth month (eight months after he left Babylon) IN THE RAIN.

 

We are so spoiled by meeting indoors to worship God with air conditioning, aren’t we?  So in verse ten Ezra is on a podium and he’s speaking to the people assembled in the rain (under a tent, I would guess) about their transgression against God – sin by any other name – by taking non-believing wives.  In order to repent or turn away from their transgression against God, the Israelites assembled have to first admit that it IS a transgression, does that not follow?  That’s Ezra’s reasoning, sought through prayer and fasting, in verse eleven and the congregation sees they must (and proclaims they must “with a loud voice”, I imagine to be heard over the rain as well as with all due sincerity, in verse twelve).  Ezra’s account – which has reverted to third person in this chapter, so Ezra’s no longer telling the story – doesn’t say who among the people presented the counter-proposal of verses thirteen and fourteen, essentially that it’s all well and good to put away our foreign wives and half-foreign-born children to renew our fellowship with God, but it made sense as so many people had done this.

 

It gets easy for sin to build up among an entire race of people, doesn’t it?  Of course it takes time, so much time often that it’s not obvious that what we once regarded as a sin is still one … but that’s what happens when we use our standards and not God’s.  So beginning the first day of the tenth month, the people who had married foreign (again, read non-God-worshiping) wives with their half-foreign-born children came along with the elders and judges of every city to Jerusalem to formally divorce their wives, give their hands – their promise, no limb-cutting here! – and offered a ram for their trespass offering.  Perhaps only those who knew their family lines would make sense of the listing that eventually appears in verses eighteen through forty-four, the rest of the chapter, but the fact this whole process with representatives of city after city meeting in Jerusalem, took only three months (read verse seventeen) tells us how willing they were and we are to seek God’s will and knowing that’s impossible if our loyalties are divided.

 

P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my address book, and I hope to be an encourager to action too! If you find that I'm not or you want me to get lost, just let me know -- thank you!

Thank You, Lord, that we can come to you in prayer and that You provide for all our needs, even when we don't know what they are. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence there and around the world.

Thank You, Lord, for everyone in leadership and service both here and abroad. Thank You for the opportunities we have and the promise of new life through You. I pray that we all seek and have a blessed week! Amen.