Ezra 9:1 - Exposition

When these things were done. It must have been some considerable time afterwards. Ezra reached Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month ( Ezra 7:9 ), rested three days ( Ezra 8:32 ), and on the fourth day of the same month made over the vessels to the temple authorities. It was not till the seventeenth day of the ninth month that, on Ezra's motion, the matter of the mixed marriages was taken in hand ( Ezra 10:8 , Ezra 10:9 ). Yet we cannot suppose that action was long delayed after the matter came to Ezra's knowledge. The princes . The civil heads of the community, whom Ezra found at the head of affairs on his arrival, and whose authority he did not wholly supersede (see Ezra 10:14 , Ezra 10:16 ). The people of the lands. The idolatrous nations inhabiting the districts adjoining Palestine: Egyptians and Amorites on the south; Moabites and Ammonites on the east; Canaanites probably towards the north and the north-west. Doing according to their abominations. Rather, "in respect of their abominations." The complaint was not so much that the Jews had as yet actually adopted idolatrous functions, as that they did not keep themselves wholly aloof from them. The foreign wives would introduce idolatrous rites into their very houses.