There is obviously an ethical hierarchy here. Marriages had taken place, but the importance of maintaining the purity of the community outweighed and superseded the sanctity of those marriages, which were sinful and wrong from the beginning. Now I have to quickly qualify this because we have such wicked, twisted little minds, that we might think, you know what, that guy I married is not a very good Christian, if he is a Christian at all. This was wrong from the beginning. That is not what this passage gives us warrant for. If any of you ever want to use Ezra 10:1–44 as an approved text to divorce, I am going to tell you, no! This is actually a description of what happened; this is not a prescription of what is supposed to happen in the life of God's people. It does not say: go out and divorce. I believe there are biblical grounds for divorce, but being married to a pagan right now is not one of them.

The apostle Paul actually addresses that very issue of a believing spouse being married to an unbelieving spouse in 1 Corinthians 7:1–40. A believing spouse is not to depart and in fact, the children are sanctified through the faith of the believing spouse. If the unbelieving spouse is unwilling to dwell with the believing spouse, Paul says, there is nothing you can do about it, you let him go. A believer is never to initiate divorce simply because the spouse is an unbeliever. But understand, that as Ezra stood there under the old covenant, there was an ethical hierarchy. The covenant fidelity to God surpassed and superseded the sanctity or lack thereof of these marriages.¹

Brian Borgman