[97] Ezra ix. 6.
[98] _Ibid._
In thus confessing the sin of the people before God, but in language which the people who shared with him a reverence for The Law could hear, no doubt Ezra hoped to move them also to share in his feelings of shame and abhorrence for the practices he was deploring. He came dangerously near to the fatal mistake of preaching through a prayer, by "praying at" the congregation. He was evidently too deeply moved to be guilty of an insincerity, a piece of profanity, at which every devout soul must revolt. Nevertheless the very exercise of public prayer--prayer uttered audibly, and conducted by the leader of a congregation--means that this is to be an inducement for the people to join in the worship. The officiating minister is not merely to pray before the congregation, while the people kneel as silent auditors. His prayer is designed to guide and help their prayers, so that there may be "common prayer" throughout the whole assembly. In this way it may be possible for him to influence men and women by praying with them, as he can never do by directly preaching to them. The essential point is that the prayer must first of all be real on the part of the leader--that he must be truly addressing God, and then that his intention with regard to the people must be not to exhort them through his prayer, but simply to induce them to join him in it.
Let us now inquire what was the nature of the sin which so grievously distressed Ezra, and which he regarded as so heavy a slur on the character of his people in the sight of God. On the surface of it, there was just a question of policy. Some have argued that the party of rigour was mistaken, that its course was suicidal, that the only way of preserving the little colony was by means of well-adjusted alliances with its neighbours--a low view of the question which Ezra would not have glanced at for a moment, because with his supreme faith in God no consideration of worldly expediency or political diplomacy could be allowed to deflect him from the path indicated, as he thought, by the Divine will. But a higher line of opposition has been taken. It has been said that Ezra was illiberal, uncharitable, culpably narrow, and heartlessly harsh. That the man who could pour forth such a prayer as this, every sentence of which throbs with emotion, every word of which tingles with intense feeling--that this man was heartless cannot be believed. Still it may be urged that Ezra took a very different view from that suggested by the genial outlook across the nations which we meet in Isaiah. The lovely idyll of Ruth defends the course he condemned so unsparingly. The Book of Jonah was written directly in rebuke of one form of Jewish exclusiveness. Ezra was going even further than the Book of Deuteronomy, which had allowed marriages with the heathen,[99] and had laid down definite marriage laws in regard to foreign connections.[100] It cannot be maintained that all the races named by Ezra were excluded. Could it be just to condemn the Jews for not having followed the later and more exacting edition of The Law, which Ezra had only just brought up with him, and which had not been known by the offenders?
[99] Deut. xxi. 13.
[100] Deut. xxiii. 1-8.
In trying to answer these questions, we must start from one clear fact. Ezra is not merely guided by a certain view of policy. He may be mistaken, but he is deeply conscientious, his motive is intensely religious. Whether rightly or wrongly, he is quite persuaded that the social condition at which he is so grievously shocked is directly opposed to the known will of God. "We have forsaken Thy commandments," he exclaims. But what commandments, we may ask, seeing that the people of Jerusalem did not possess a law that went so far as Ezra was requiring of them? His own language here comes in most appositely. Ezra does not appeal to Deuteronomy, though he may have had a passage from that book in mind,[101] neither does he produce the Law Book which he has brought up with him from Babylon and to which reference is made in our version of the decree of Artaxerxes;[102] but he turns to the prophets, not with reference to any of their specific utterances, but in the most general way, implying that his view is derived from the broad stream of prophecy in its whole course and character. In his prayer he describes the broken commandments as "those which Thou hast commanded by Thy servants the prophets." This is the more remarkable because the prophets did not favour the scrupulous observance of external rules, but dwelt on great principles of righteousness. Some of them took the liberal side, and expressed decidedly cosmopolitan ideas in regard to foreign nations as Ezra must have been aware. He may have mentally anticipated the excuses which would be urged in reliance on isolated utterances of this character. Still, on a survey of the whole course of prophecy, he is persuaded that it is opposed to the practices which he condemns. He throws his conclusion into a definite sentence, after the manner of a verbal quotation,[103] but this is only in accordance with the vivid, dramatic style of Semitic literature, and what he really means is that the spirit of his national prophecy and the principles laid down by the recognised prophets support him in the position which he has taken up. These prophets fought against all corrupt practices, and in particular they waged ceaseless war with the introduction of heathenish manners to the religious and social life of Israel. It is here that Ezra finds them to be powerful allies in his stern reformation. They furnish him, so to speak, with his major premiss, and that is indisputable. His weak place is in his minor premiss, viz., in the notion that intermarriage with Gentile neighbours necessarily involves the introduction of corrupt heathenish habits. This he quietly assumes. But there is much to be said for his position, especially when we note that he is not now concerned with the Samaritans, with whom the temple-builders came into contact and who accepted some measure of the Jewish faith, but in some cases with known idolaters--the Egyptians for instance. The complex social and moral problems which surround the quarrel on which Ezra here embarks will come before us more fully as we proceed. At present it may suffice for us to see that Ezra rests his action on his conception of the main characteristics of the teaching of the prophets.