Ezra 10:44

All these had taken strange wives,.... In all about one hundred and thirteen: and some of them had wives by whom they had children; and yet they put them away, which made it the more difficult for

Whereby he implies that most of their wives were barren; which came to pass by God’ s special providence, partly to manifest his displeasure against such matches, and partly that the practice of this great and necessary duty might not be encumbered with too many difficulties.

Ezra 10:44 All these had taken strange wives: and [some] of them had wives by whom they had children.Ver. 44. And some of them had wives by whom they had children] Who yet for all that were put away together with their children, Ezra 10:3. The Hebrew hath it thus, and there were of them women, and they had put forth sons, or exposed their sons to do as they might, or to be disposed of by the judges; as that good woman who told Bonner, that if he burnt her, she hoped he would keep Faith, Hope, and Charity (those were the names of her three daughters). No, by my truth will not I, quoth the bishop; I will meddle with none of them (Acts and Mon.).

(18-44) List of the transgressors. (19) They gave their hands.—The four members of the high priest’s family were peculiarly dealt with. They gave their distinct pledge, and offered each a special trespass offering. It is one among a multitude of similar tokens of authenticity in the history; and inventor would have given some reason for the peculiarity. (22) Pashur.—Comparing Ezra 2:36-39, we find that all the priestly families that returned with Zerub-babel were implicated in the national offence. (25) Of Israel.—Of the laity eighty-six are mentioned, belonging to ten races which returned with Zerubbabel. (34) Bani.—Probably this should be some other name, as Bani occurs before. The peculiarly large number of the representatives of his race suggests that there is some confusion in the present text. (44) All these had taken strange wives.—Though the numbers are not summed up and distributed, it is evident that this closing sentence is emphatic. Ezra ends his history with a catalogue of the delinquents—strong testimony to the importance he attached to the reformation. The last words—literally, and there were of them wives who had brought forth children—tend in the same direction. Not even this pathetic fact restrained the thoroughness of the excision. But the Book of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 13:23 seq.) will show that it was thorough only for a time.

Verse 44. Some of them had wives by whom they had children.] This observation was probably intended to show that only a few of them had children; but it shows also how rigorously the law was put in execution. According to a passage in Justin Martyr's dialogue with Trypho, a Jew, Ezra offered a paschal lamb on this occasion, and addressed the people thus: "And Ezra said to the people, This passover is our Saviour and our Refuge; and if ye will be persuaded of it, and let it enter into your hearts, that we are to humble ourselves to him in a sign, and afterwards shall believe in him, this place shall not be destroyed for ever, saith the Lord of Hosts: but if ye will not believe in him, nor hearken to his preaching, ye shall be a laughing-stock to the Gentiles." - Dial. cum Tryphone, sec. 72. This passage, Justin says, the Jews, through their enmity to Christ, blotted out of the book of Ezra. He charges them with cancelling several other places through the same spirit of enmity and opposition. In the Hebrew text this and the following book make but one, though sometimes Nehemiah is distinguished as the second book of Esdras. In the Masoretic enumeration of sections, &c., both books are conjoined. This may be seen at the end of Nehemiah. I can add nothing of importance to the character of Ezra, which has already been given so much in detail in the introduction to this book. Corrected, March, 1828. - A. CLARKE.

44. All these had taken strange wives] So also the R.V., a different phrase in the original from that rendered ‘had married strange women’. See on Ezra 9:2. and some of them had wives by whom they had children] So R.V. Marg. Or, some of the wives had borne children. The clause in the original is beset with difficulties. Literally rendered it seems to be ‘And there were of them (masc.) wives, and they (masc.) begat children’. The LXX. renders freely ‘And they begat of them sons’ (καὶἐγέννησανἐξαὐτῶνυἱούς) agreeing generally with the A.V. and R.V. text. The Vulgate has ‘And there were of them wives which had borne children’, agreeing with the margin of the R.V. This, it must be confessed, gives the best sense, although it does violence to the grammar in the matter of genders. The exact purpose of the clause is also a matter of uncertainty. (1) By some it is supposed that the clause is intended to illustrate the difficulties with which this general divorce was attended. The action was complicated by the question of the children. (2) Others think that it is added to show how thoroughly the commission was carried out. Mothers and their children were alike driven forth, in accordance with Shecaniah’s proposal (Ezra 10:3) ‘Let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives and such as are born of them’. The probability that we are here confronted with another instance of textual corruption receives support from the parallel passage, 1Es 9:36 ‘And they put them away along with their children’, which suggests the existence of a different original text.

44. Wives by whom they had children — The Hebrew reads literally, And there were of them (δν, them, is here masculine, and seems to refer to all these at the beginning of the verse,) wives, and they