OT question about Ezra and Jewish men marrying non-Jewish women

[Tis_Bearself]

At the end of Ezra there is a huge deal about how, when the faithful Jewish people returned to Judah from Babylonian exile, some of the men offended God in a big way by taking foreign women as wives, and all of them have to send their wives (and any offspring conceived with them) away and make reparation for this awful breaking of God’s covenant.

How does this square with people like Moses and Boaz taking non-Jewish women as their wives and God apparently being perfectly fine with that? I know Ruth basically converted to Judaism and accepted Yahweh as her God before she was married. Why weren’t these other foreign women at least given the option? Also, I know Solomon took a lot of foreign wives and allowed them to practice their pagan religions, which led to a lot of trouble and was sinful, but he would seem to be sort of an extreme case given the number of wives and the fact that he was the king and David’s son.

 

[Zaccheus]

I think the context in Ezra is different from the example of Moses. In the case of Moses, the worship of Yahweh had not been fully established among the children of Abraham in Egypt. They remembered the God of their fathers but there was not yet an established priesthood nor a set of laws for His worship.

In Ezra the Jews had just returned from two generations of captivity in a pagan land. They were being restored to the proper worship of their God. It’s likely the foreign wives were thoroughly pagan and raising their children as pagans. They were turning their husbands and children away from Yahweh.

 

[Dan_Defender]

Moses’ Law forbade this intermarriage (Deuteronomy 7:3). So Ezra had this to back him up. Also, God knows the heart, so He knew these women were up to no good and would corrupt the Israelites. What is significant is that these men, instead of rebelling against Ezra, accepted his instruction and said ‘we have greatly transgressed in this matter’.