This week we are finishing the book of Ezra which ends with a resolution to the remnant’s intermarriage crisis. Ezra’s emotional reaction to the community’s guilt continued. The narrator wrote, “Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God” (10:1). Most likely, Ezra’s public repentance occurred in the temple courtyard because “a very great assembly of men, women, and children gathered to him” (10:1). Touchingly, the people did not react to Ezra’s display with cynicism or self-defense. Instead, they wept bitterly alongside him.
