Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Ezra 4-10

The Facts (Chapter number: Verse)

Ezra 4 - No mention of any women.

Ezra 5 - No mention of any women.

Ezra 6 - No mention of any women.

Ezra 7 - No mention of any women.

Ezra 8 - No mention of any women.

9:2 - The people of Israel had taken daughters from the people of the lands as wives for themselves and for their sons.
9:12 - Ezra tells the people to not give the foreign daughters to their sons and never seek their peace or prosperity so that the people of Israel may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for their children.

10:1-3 - An assembly of men, women and children gathered to Ezra outside of Israel and the people wept bitterly. Shecaniah son of Jehiel, of the descendants of Elam, addressed Ezra saying, "We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the people of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. So now let us make a covenant with our God to send away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God and let it be done according to the law."
10:10-11 - Ezra the priest stood up and said to the peopel of Judah and Benjamin, "You have trespassed and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now make confession to the Lord the God of your ancestors, and do his will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives."
10:17-20 - By the first day of the first month they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women. There were found of the descendants of the priests who had married foreign women, of the descendants of Jeshua son of Jozadak and his brothers: Maaseiah, Eliezer, Jarib and Gedaliah. They pledged themselves to send away their wives and their guilt offering was a ram of the flock for their guilt.
10:44 - All of these men had married foreign women and they sent them away with their children.

My Comments

Oh no, not foreign women! However could God's people do such a thing?! D:

Gotta love the extreme xenophobia of the Bible. Love thy neighbor as long as thy neighbor is of the correct tribe, right?

So the obvious solution to this problem is to throw the women and their children (presumably not all of these children are adults) out of the tribe to fend for themselves. Don't punish the men who took the wives in the first place, let's just punish the people who didn't have much choice in the matter. I just find the wanton killing and exiling of those whom are not God's chosen people unsettling. According to the old testament you have to be born into the religion, you can't be converted or pay a price to become one of God's people. You either are or you aren't. So I guess I find it kind of funny that according to today's Christianity God is a completely different person who will accept anyone into his fold. Why would God's attitude towards that kind of thing change so drastically? I just don't get it...

Friday: Nehemiah

3 comments:

  1. Oookay. Foreign women and THEIR children - I assume these aren't children the women had from former marriages.

    So these guys marry the local ladies, get them pregnant, then abandon the women and children? Lovely.

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  2. Yep. Gotta keep the blood lines pure. The Bible is VERY much against God's people mixing with those who are not chosen by God. So if the children who were mixed had been allowed to stay then they would have just created more mixed children and on and on and on. Blood line purity is more important than actual people so it's not an issue to kick the women and children to the curb. Hell, the women and children were probably killed and mutilated during the next God sanctioned invasion of their tribe.

    What also gets me is God has allowed his people to take foreign women/virgins before as the spoils of war. So I guess he's also just kicking these women and children out simply because His people took them without His say so. Maybe God isn't anti-foreigners at all but just anti-people doing shit that He didn't tell them to do. Or something.

    But, you know, this is the Good Book and all so all of this capturing and raping and impregnating and casting aside of foreign women much be moral, right?

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  3. You're saying that Goldy morals lead to raping and pillaging? I think I'll see what there is to this humanism thing ...

    ReplyDelete

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