All these had taken foreign wives: and some of them had wives by whom they had children.
Read Chapter 10
Bede
AD 735
Now Ezra himself was clearly a type of the Lord Savior too, inasmuch as he restored sacred Scripture, recalled the people out from captivity to Jerusalem, enriched the Lord’s house with greater gifts, appointed leaders and guardians beyond the river Euphrates who were familiar with God’s law and purified the descendants of the exiles from their foreign wives. For the Lord restored sacred Scripture, because when the scribes and the Pharisees either had defiled it by their traditions or taught that it should be understood according to the letter alone, he showed it was full of spiritual meaning, according as to whether it was written by Moses or by the prophets; and by sending the Holy Spirit on them he also caused the New Testament to be written down by apostles and apostolic men. He led the people out from captivity in Babylonia and brought them now liberated to Jerusalem and the promised land, not only because by suffering on that one occasion on the cross he redeemed the world throug...
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 t...
Children. Hebrew may be, "and some of these women had exposed their children. "But most follow the Septuagint and Vulgate. 3 Esdras ix. 36, "and they ejected them with their children. "None was spared. (Calmet)
One great inconvenience of such connections is, that the offspring is illegitimate. (Worthington)
Only 17 priests, 10 Levites, and 86 laymen, are stigmatized as guilty of this scandal; yet these fill Israel with confusion, and Esdras with extreme affliction. (Haydock)
