The People’s Response (10:1–4)

Weeping and throwing himself down (10:1). “Weeping,” not silently but aloud (cf. 3:12; Neh. 1:4; Joel 1:12–17), like laughing, is contagious. The people also “wept bitterly” (lit., “wept with a great weeping”—a Hebrew idiom; cf. Jer. 8:18–22). “Throwing himself down” is a participle that implies that Ezra kept on “throwing himself down” on the ground. He had been kneeling before (Ezra 9:5). The prophets and other leaders sometimes used object lessons, even bizarre actions, to attract people’s attention (Isa. 7:3; 8:14, 18; Jer. 19; 27). Kidner comments, “Instead of whipping a reluctant people into action, Ezra has pricked their conscience to the point at which they now urge him to act.”118 Leslie Allen compares his leadership by example to that of Mahatma Gandhi.119

Ruins of the Jewish settlement at Elephantine, where intermarriage and syncretism threatened the covenant identity of the community.

Shiela Chung Hagen

Making a covenant (10:3). “Make a covenant” (nikrāt-b^erît, lit., “to cut a covenant”) derives from the practice of cutting a sacrificial animal. Originally it may have involved passing between the pieces with the implied curse that whoever did not keep the covenant should be cut up like the animals (Gen. 15:9–18).120

All these women and their children (10:3). This phrase reflects the fact that in ancient societies, as in ours, mothers were given custody of their children when marriages were dissolved. When Hagar was dismissed, Ishmael was sent with her (Gen. 21:14). In Babylonia divorced women were granted their children and had to wait for them to grow up before remarrying.121