*Please note: due to technical difficulties, the podcast and video audio begin 12 min 5 sec into the worship service.

“Wait, is that in the Bible? I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard that story before!”

These words may be akin to what ran through your head when you heard this passage from Ezra. I know something akin to that ran through mine when I first remember hearing it in seminary. Not in Sunday school. Or youth group. Or even in college. Even though I had read through the Bible all the way through before I got to seminary, it was then that I really understood what is happening in this passage here at the end of Ezra.

In case you don’t know or remember the context, Ezra is one of the leaders of the people of God following the Babylonian Exile. The Israelites are allowed to return, in order to rebuild. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of this rebuild, including construction of the wall around the Temple, and rebuilding of the social structure around the Torah. Ezra was a priest, and in many ways, a hero to God’s people from this period. After years of Exile, a tenuous return, and shaky rebuild, it looks like they will be united under Ezra and the other leaders of their day.

And then Shecaniah shows up. We don’t know much about Shecaniah, besides this event, but his words here have tremendous effect on the community of faith, and on generations who have come since. His argument is basically this:

1.      God wants us to follow the Torah (which is the main point of the book of Ezra),

2.      the Torah says that you should have no other gods before me,

3.      some of our men have married women from other faiths and cultures and races,

4.      therefore, the only way to be faithful to God is to send these women and the children from these marriages back to their homes and most likely to their deaths on the way there, alone and unprotected in the wilderness

5.      thus impressing God with our purity.

Huh. OK, then. Biblical scholar Johanna Bos suggests that Shecaniah demonstrates what she calls “creative exegesis.” [Exegesis is just a fancy word for Bible study and life application.] In other words, the Torah does not say that men who have married wives from other faiths and cultures and races must divorce them and send them back to their homes (and probably to their deaths). Shecaniah reads into scripture something that seems to come more from his own cultural presuppositions and bigotry and racism. In fact, Bos suggests, Shecaniah completely misquotes the Torah, which actually suggests on more than one occasion that the community of faith must care for and protect “the stranger,” those from outside the community who come seeking refuge in their midst. In Hebrew, the word is gar and is sometimes translated as guest or sojourner. Even though these women seem to be precisely the stranger that God commands care for, Shecaniah uses a different word—nokree—putting them in a different category and thus suggesting that the Torah’s command for care no longer applies. Shecaniah dehumanizes these women and places them in the category of God’s enemies. And the priest Ezra and the officials go along with it, and enact Shecaniah’s suggestion.

According to Bos, this creative exegesis comes not from the pages of Scripture, but from a much closer culprit: fear. She writes, “Fear looks for a scapegoat. The officials and Ezra locate a scapegoat in the group of women who have been taken into marriage by the Jews.” Because they are afraid of the other and of God and God’s retribution, these women and children are sacrificed, sending hundreds of them to their deaths.

What do we do with this story?

Unsurprisingly, this story of exclusion and violence has led to practices of exclusion and violenc