All these had taken foreign wives: and some of them had wives by whom they had children.
All Commentaries on Ezra 10:44 Go To Ezra 10
Bede
AD 735
First they put away the unlawful wives, and only then do they offer a ram on their behalf so that, cleansed from the crime, they might approach the altar in a state of purity. For it is difficult for a person’s offering to be acceptable to God if he does not first strive to abandon the misdeed for which he offers it, as Isaiah says: “Cease to act perversely; learn to do well.” And because they who were the first to sin were the descendants or brothers of the high priest, it is right that they offer a ram from their flock as a punishment for their crime in order that by such a victim they might indicate that they themselves who were seen to be the teachers and rulers of the people, as it were the leaders of a flock of followers, had arranged to sacrifice themselves with respect to their former way of life and, purged by appropriate penance, to offer themselves to God through a better way of life. Meanwhile, it should be noted with what great art of warfare the devil constantly assails the faithful and how he never leaves them any time secure from battle. For consider how those who could not be overcome by misfortunes were overcome by enticements; they conquered their public enemies when the Lord’s temple was built and dedicated but were conquered by a desire for Gentile women, so that they did not keep the temples of their own hearts and bodies worthy for God to inhabit. Very clearly there is a complete allegorical interpretation of this for our own times. For we see that the minds of the faithful are tempted inwardly with much greater danger now when they are seduced and enticed by their own lust than when they were previously tempted outwardly when their brutal opponent was raging against their constancy by sword and fire. But the mercy of the Lord will be present, so that just as it then endowed those people with the virtue of patience against open battles of those who raged against them, in the same way it may also give us the protection of caution against the snares of enticements that catch us unawares. Accordingly, when the pontifex and all those who feared the Lord acted zealously, those who had sinned “were pricked in the heart,” and they cast out their foreign wives. Once they expelled the baseness of selfindulgence, the beauty of chasteness returned; once they cast out the debris of the vices, the flowers and spices of the virtues were strewn in the Lord’s city.
