Ezra 10:1-4
Ezra's confession gathers the people into shared mourning, and Shekaniah urges hope-filled covenant action rather than denial, despair, or delay.
1 Now while Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before God’s house, there was gathered together to him out of Israel a very great assembly of men and women and children; for the people wept very bitterly.
2 Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered Ezra, “We have trespassed against our God, and have married foreign women of the peoples of the land. Yet now there is hope for Israel concerning this thing.
3 Now therefore let’s make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and those who are born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God. Let it be done according to the law.
4 Arise; for the matter belongs to you, and we are with you. Be courageous, and do it.”
Ezra's confession gathers the people into shared mourning, and Shekaniah urges hope-filled covenant action rather than denial, despair, or delay.
To show that Ezra's public confession and grief awaken the restored community to the seriousness of covenant unfaithfulness and to the need for decisive, Scripture-governed repentance.
Postexilic Judah after Ezra's arrival from Babylon and after the exposure of intermarriage with surrounding peoples in Ezra 9.