10)“And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.
11) Now therefore make confession unto the LORD God of your fathers, and do His pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives.”
Have you ever seen children of a mixed-race couple? Which race do they look like? The majority look like they are a blend of both races; they are what the Bible calls them: a “confusion of faces.” They have genes from both races, and they can usually be very confused as to what race they come from. The children are certainly not born in the image of either parent.
The Israelites had committed two main sins:
They hadn’t separated themselves from the people of the land, and
They hadn’t separated themselves from their strange wives.
Let’s go back into Chapter 9 and see if we can find what led up to the controversy in Chapter 10. Let us read verses 1-4:
