Ezra 10:10-17

English Standard Version

¹⁰ And Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have broken faith and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel. ¹¹ Now then ^(A)make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers and do his will. ^(B)Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.” ¹² Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice, “It is so; we must do as you have said. ¹³ But the people are many, and it is a time of heavy rain; we cannot stand in the open. Nor is this a task for one day or for two, for we have greatly transgressed in this matter. ¹⁴ Let our officials stand for the whole assembly. Let all in our cities who have taken foreign wives come ^(C)at appointed times, and with them the elders and judges of every city, ^(D)until the fierce wrath of our God over this matter is turned away from us.” ¹⁵ Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahzeiah the son of Tikvah opposed this, and ^(E)Meshullam and ^(F)Shabbethai the Levite supported them.

¹⁶ Then the returned exiles did so. Ezra the priest selected men,^[a] heads of fathers' houses, according to their fathers' houses, each of them designated by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the matter; ¹⁷ and by the first day of the first month they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women.