Resolved...

First, it is the leaders who come to Ezra, not Ezra who comes to the leaders (Ezra 9:1). The reform is not imposed top-down from a Persian-appointed outsider; it is a conviction rising from within the community under the effect of Ezra's public teaching and prayer. Nykolaishen rightly notes: "The initiative to send away the foreign wives comes from a layman."5 Shecaniah — a member of a family implicated in the sin (Ezra 10:26) — is the one who proposes the solution (Ezra 10:2–4).

Second, the sin is defined in covenantal, not racial, terms. Ezra 9:1 lists "Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites" — several of whom (Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Amorites) no longer existed as discrete ethnic groups in the Persian period. Thomas concludes: "Ezra seems to be deliberately citing from passages in the books of Moses with the intent of targeting categories rather than individuals,"6 the categories being those nations whose abominations had contaminated the land (Deut. 7:1–4; cf. Ex. 34:11–16).

Third, the offense is specifically unfaithfulness to the covenant (Heb. maʿal), the same word used of Achan in Joshua 7:1 and reserved in the Old Testament for covenant-breach, not merely ethnic irregularity (cf. Lev. 5:15; 26:40; Num. 5:6; 1 Chr. 10:13).7 Nykolaishen underlines the intertextual link: "Just as Achan's unfaithfulness shortly after entering the promised land put the inheritance of Canaan at risk for all Israel, so the unfaithfulness of intermarriage shortly after the return to Canaan puts the restoration at risk."8

Fourth, the method is communal, legal, and judicial. The people swear an oath (Ezra 10:5), the leaders are summoned to Jerusalem under threat of excommunication and property forfeiture (10:7–8, using the strong word ḥerem — devoted to destruction/dedication; cf. Lev. 27:21), and a three-month commission of elders and judges examines each case individually (Ezra 10:14, 16–17). Breneman notes that "the guilty men had to come with the elders and judges of their town who would know the individual circumstances. This shows a genuine interest in justice for each case."9 It was not an angry mob or a pogrom; it was a tribunal.

Fifth, the textual evidence suggests that the Hebrew itself distances these unions from the normal language of marriage. Both Thomas and Smith draw attention to the unusual verb used in Ezra 10:2 and Nehemiah 13:23, 27:

"The Hebrew word employed for married is not the customary word in Hebrew and is not translated this way except here and in Nehemiah 13. It is possible, therefore, that what we have here is not the dissolution of marriage but an example of illicit unions. Technically, however old-fashioned it may now sound, they were 'living in sin.'"10

https://youtu.be/eUSRsXIqU2M?si=wECK0v0I-M_kk_DN

"As the divorced mother says: “I used to think my job was to stay whole, to keep it all humming along like the vaudeville act with the spinning plates, every plate just about to fall and break, but still miraculously whirling. But I was wrong, my job was to let the plates crash and shatter. My job was to fall apart spectacularly, and then to make a new self out of fragments.” 

The Not Wives

"The years we have just gone through have killed something in us. And that something is simply the old confidence man had in himself, which led him to believe that he could always elicit human reactions from another man if he spoke to him in the language of a common humanity. We have seen men lie, degrade, kill, deport, torture - and each time it was not possible to persuade them not to do these things because they were sure of themselves and because one cannot appeal to an abstraction, i.e. the representative of an ideology. Mankind's dialogue has just come to an end. And naturally a man with whom one cannot reason is a man to be feared" ("Neither Victim Nor Executioner").

So revolutions broke out in city after city, and in places where the revolutions occurred late the knowledge of what had happened previously in other places caused still new extravagances of revolutionary zeal, expressed by an elaboration in the methods of seizing power and by unheard-of atrocities in revenge.

To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings.

What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.

Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defence. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect. To plot successfully was a sign of intelligence, but it was still cleverer to see that a plot was hatching. If one attempted to provide against having to do either, one was disrupting the unity of the party and acting out of fear of the opposition. In short, it was equally praiseworthy to get one’s blow in first against someone who was going to do wrong, and to denounce someone who had no intention of doing any wrong at all.

Family relations were a weaker tie than party membership, since party members were more ready to go to any extreme for any reason whatever. These parties were not formed to enjoy the benefits of the established laws, but to acquire power by overthrowing the existing regime; and the members of these parties felt confidence in each other not because of any fellowship in a religious communion, but because they were partners in crime. If an opponent made a reasonable speech, the party in power, so far from giving it a generous reception, took every precaution to see that it had no practical effect.

Revenge was more important than self-preservation. And if pacts of mutual security were made, they were entered into by the two parties only in order to meet some temporary difficulty, and remained in force only so long as there was no other weapon available. When the chance came, the one who first seized it boldly, catching his enemy off his guard, enjoyed a revenge that was all the sweeter from having been taken, not openly, but because of a breach of faith. It was safer that way, it was considered, and at the same time a victory won by treachery gave one a title for superior intelligence. And indeed most people are more ready to call villainy cleverness than simplemindedness honesty. They are proud of the first quality and ashamed of the second.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils. To this must be added the violent fanaticism which came into play once the struggle had broken out. Leaders of parties in the cities had programmes which appeared admirable – on one side political equality for the masses, on the other the safe and sound government of the aristocracy – but in professing to serve the public interest they were seeking to win the prizes for themselves. In their struggles for ascendancy nothing was barred; terrible indeed were the actions to which they committed themselves, and in taking revenge they went farther still.

Here they were deterred neither by the claims of justice nor by the interests of the state; their one standard was the pleasure of their own party at that particular moment, and so, either by means of condemning their enemies on an illegal vote or by violently usurping power over them, they were always ready to satisfy the hatreds of the hour.

Thus neither side had any use for conscientious motives; more interest was shown in those who could produce attractive arguments to justify some disgraceful action. As for the citizens who held moderate views, they were destroyed by both the extreme parties, either for not taking part in the struggle or in envy at the possibility that they might survive.

Let us be courageous and rejoice always. . . . Let us consider and lay to heart that while the Lord is with us, our foes can do us no hurt. . . . But if they see us rejoicing in the Lord, contemplating the bliss of the future, mindful of the Lord, deeming all things in His hand . . . — they are discomfited and turned backwards. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, 207)

Like his Savior, who "for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising its shame" (Heb 12:2), Athanasius learned from Jesus about the importance of joy in adversity.

“Let the Church be protected in the exercise of its spiritual power by spiritual means only – as preaching of the Word, administration of the sacraments, and the like. Whatever is further pretended as necessary unto any of the ends of true religion or its preservation in the nation, is but a cover for the negligence, idleness, and insufficiency of some of the clergy, who would have an outward appearance of effecting that by external force which themselves, by diligent prayer, sedulous preaching of the Word, and an exemplary conversation, ought to labour for in the hearts of men…. Whilst the same doctrine of truth is preached in all places, the same sacraments administered – wherein every Protestant subject of the nation will be at liberty to join in Protestant Christian worship, and to partake of all Church ordinances in the outward way, and according unto the outward rites, of his own choosing, without the authoritative examination or prohibition of any pretended Church power but what, in his own judgment, he doth embrace – no inconvenience will follow hereon, unless it be judged such, that the Protestant religion, the liberty of the subjects, and the due freedom of the consciences of men sober and peaceable, will be all preserved.”