9:1-4 Many corruptions lurk out of the view of the most careful rulers. Some of the people disobeyed the express command of God, which forbade all marriages with the heathen, De 7. Disbelief of God's all-sufficiency, is at the bottom of the sorry shifts we make to help ourselves. They exposed themselves and their children to the peril of idolatry, that had ruined their church and nation. Carnal professors may make light of such connexions, and try to explain away the exhortations to be separate; but those who are best acquainted with the word of God, will treat the subject in another manner. They must forebode the worst from such unions. The evils excused, and even pleaded for; by many professors, astonish and cause regret in the true believer. All who profess to be God's people, ought to strengthen those that appear and act against vice and profaneness.

Verse 3. - I rent my garment and my mantle. Rending the clothes was always, and still is, one of the commonest Oriental modes of showing grief. Reuben rent his clothes when his brothers sold Joseph to the Midianites, and Jacob did the same when he believed that Joseph was dead (Genesis 37:29, 34). Job "rent his mantle" on learning the death of his sons and daughters (Job 1:20); and his friends "rent every one his mantle when they came to mourn with him and comfort him" (Job 2:11, 12). Rent clothes indicated that a messenger was a messenger of woe (1 Samuel 4:12; 2 Samuel 1:2), or that a man had heard something that had greatly shocked him, and of which he wished to express his horror (2 Kings 18:37; Matthew 26:65). Ezra's action is of this last kind, expressive of horror more than of grief, but perhaps in some degree of grief also. And plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard. These are somewhat unusual signs of grief among the Orientals, who were wont to shave the head in great mourning, but seldom tore the hair out by the roots. The practice is not elsewhere mentioned in Scripture, excepting in the apocryphal books (1 Esdras 8:71; 2 Esdras 1:8; Apoc. Esther 4:2). And sat down astonied. Compare Daniel 4:19; Daniel 8:27, where the same verb is used in the same sense.

And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle,.... Both inward and outward garments, that which was close to his body, and that which was thrown loose over it; and this he did in token of sorrow and mourning, as if something very dreadful and distressing, see Job 1:20

and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard; did not shave them, and so transgressed not the law in Leviticus 19:27 but plucked off the hair of them, to show his extreme sorrow for what was told him: which has frequently been done by mourners on sorrowful occasions in various nations, see Isaiah 15:2. So in the apocryphal "addition" to Esther,"And laid away her glorious apparel, and put on the garments of anguish and mourning: and instead of precious ointments, she covered her head with ashes and dung, and she humbled her body greatly, and all the places of her joy she filled with her torn hair.'' (Esther 14:2)she is said to fill every place of joy with the tearing of her hair; and Lavinia in Virgil (k); several passages from Homer (l), and other writers, both Greek and Latin, are mentioned by Bochart (m) as instances of it:

and sat down astonished; quite amazed at the ingratitude of the people, that after such favours shown them, in returning them from captivity unto their own land, and settling them there, they should give into practices so contrary to the will of God.

(k) Aeneid. 12. prope finem. Vid. Ciceron. Tusc. Quaest. l. 3.((l) Vid. Iliad. 10. ver. 15. & Iliad. 22. ver. 77, 78, 406. & Iliad. 24. ver. 711. (m) Hierozoic. par. 1. l. 2. c. 45. col. 481.

3. when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, &c.—the outer and inner garment, which was a token not only of great grief, but of dread at the same time of the divine wrath;

plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard—which was a still more significant sign of overpowering grief.

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