Ezra9chapter 9

Ezra 9:1-2

The princes bring Ezra a report, not a confession: priests, Levites and the people of Israel have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, and the roll of eight nations echoes the conquest list of Deuteronomy 7:1 while adding Ammon, Moab and Egypt to it. Verse 2 names the wound precisely: the holy seed have mingled themselves with those peoples, and the hand of the princes and rulers has been chief in this trespass. The leaders who should have guarded the covenant led its breach, the same pattern the wall roster later records in reverse, when the Tekoite nobles alone refuse the work.

Ezra 9:3-4

Ezra answers the report with his body before he answers it with words: he rents his garment and his mantle, plucks the hair of his head and beard, and sits down astonied. Those who tremble at the words of the God of Israel gather to him, drawn by grief rather than by summons, and Ezra sits astonied until the evening sacrifice. No blame is spoken yet; the chapter's first response to sin is sorrow, worn openly in the street rather than argued in private.

Ezra 9:5-6

At the hour of the evening sacrifice Ezra rises from his heaviness and falls upon his knees, spreading out his hands unto the Lord his God, the posture of a supplicant rather than a mediator with standing to demand. What follows is confession without a single word of petition: I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God, for our iniquities are increased over our head and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. Ezra was not himself among the intermarried, yet he prays in the first person plural throughout, owning a national sin as his own.

Ezra 9:7-9

Ezra traces the trespass back before his own generation, since the days of our fathers, to the exile itself: kings and priests delivered to the sword, to captivity, to a spoil and to confusion of face. Against that verdict he sets the mercy of the moment, verified: for a little space grace has been shown, a remnant left to escape, a nail in his holy place, a little reviving in our bondage, and now a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem. Clarke reads the nail as no more than ground enough to fix a tent-pole, and the confession measures grace on exactly that scale, small and named honestly rather than inflated. The wall named here in prayer is the same wall Nehemiah will raise with his own hands within a generation.

Ezra 9:10-12

The confession turns to helplessness: what shall we say after this, for we have forsaken thy commandments. Ezra gives the sense of the prophets' warning against the land's uncleanness rather than one quoted verse, then states the law itself almost word for word from Deuteronomy 7:3, give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons. The ground named for the prohibition is the land and the inheritance, that ye may be strong and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever, covenant fidelity rather than the ancestry of the nations themselves, and the same book later receives proselytes who separate themselves to the law at Nehemiah 10:28.

Ezra 9:13-15

punished us less than our iniquities deserve: The confession names grace exactly: after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespass, thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve. Ezra asks the question the whole chapter has been building toward, should we again break thy commandments and join in affinity with the people of these abominations, and answers it himself: God's anger would leave no remnant nor escaping. The prayer ends without petition or resolution, O Lord God of Israel, thou art righteous, for we remain yet escaped and we cannot stand before thee because of this; the covenant's response comes only in the chapter that follows.