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Readings

by Rick Dietrich

Ezra and the Ethiopian Eunuch

I was taught, when I was young, that it is good, now and then, to break out of one's daily routine. Do not teach this to your children. It can cause discomfort; and it is a difficult habit to break.

Having become at ease with Luke's gospel, for example, he might pick up the book of Ezra. Having been taught that the Old Testament has to be read entirely in its own context, she might find that impossible.

Here, in brief (though taking the long view), is the situation of Ezra. The people of Israel have left Egypt. They have escaped the tyranny of Pharaoh. They have wandered in the desert. They have, with difficulty, taken possession of the land God promised their ancestor Abraham. They have lived in the land under judges and kings. They have done good things, and they have done ill things. More and more, they have been doing the latter. They lost the land, it seems, as a result. They have spent years in exile in Babylon. But now, they have been allowed to come back.

They are back, though wasted by subjection and neglect, they are neither strong nor many. They are weak, rather, and few. They do not have great plans. They are just trying to get up and running again, trying to get settled in a land that doesn't entirely belong to them. Marrying, having children.

Three propositions:

Laws governing marriage and family are essential to any society. Among those laws is one requiring Ezra's people to keep themselves separate from the peoples of the land.

Love is notoriously difficult to legislate. Some of these people have either overlooked or ignored the law requiring them to keep separate. They have married women from the land; they have had children.

The righteous love law-breakers. Certain righteous men have brought the matter to Ezra. They can hardly contain themselves: “My God! What are we going to do?”

"It's everybody,” these righteous men tell Ezra. Neither the ordinary folk nor, worse, the priests and Levites seem to be able to keep themselves away from "the peoples of the land and their abominations.” They have "desecrated the holy race” (Ezra 9:2 [NAB]).

Ezra is beside himself, or he would be, if he could get outside himself. "When I had heard this thing,” he tells us, "I tore my cloak and my mantle, plucked hair from my head and beard, and sat there stupefied” -- in the public square, all day, until "at the time of the evening sacrifice, I rose, I rose in my wretchedness, and with cloak and mantle torn I fell on my knees, stretching out my hands to the Lord, my God” (9:3, 5).

"I'm too ashamed to raise my head," Ezra says to God, as if it's all his (Ezra's) fault. "What am I going to do?"

I'm tempted to think of Ezra as the prototypical Jewish mother, when I remember a story, apparently true (as it was told with pride) told me by a friend of mine in Florida. He remembers violating one or another of the rules of his family, when he was a boy—probably too young to marry a despicable Perizzite -- but a significant rule, nevertheless. He was sent to discuss the matter with his father, who proceeded to remove his belt. "There has," the stern father said, "been a significant failure here. I'm sorry," he said. And be began whipping ... himself.

Ezra takes all the blame on himself. And the people say, "Amen." And, "Ouch." And they assure him they'll never do it again. Even better, they'll put these alien women away—and their children.

(It is interesting at least to glance at the parallel story in Nehemiah, if only to contrast how extroverts and introverts rule. Again, the people fail by taking alien wives. And Nehemiah is beside himself. That means he does not tear out his hair and his beard. He tears out the hair and beards of the offenders.)

What do we make of this story, in either case? There has been a tendency to acknowledge that, yes, by post-Enlightenment standards, Ezra's requirement that the people put away their alien families, was harsh. But ‘History has proved him right.'

For, with Ezra comes the beginning of Judaism. His action against mixed marriages saves Judaism, and the Jews. If Ezra hadn't put a stop to this monkey business, these pagan people of the land would have overrun Ezra's people, or worse, absorbed them. The returning exiles would have lost all sense of racial and religious identity.

Moreover, with Ezra, and the preservation of the Jews and Judaism, Christianity is saved. For if Jesus' people and his faith had not been preserved, there could have been no Jesus. Therefore, no Christ, and no salvation.

I'm not sure quite what to make of this. A fictional historian I know says, "No Jews? No Jesus? Maybe not, but we don't know. We only know what happened. We never know what would have happened if." He suggests the interesting (if clearly heretical) possibility that the intermarriage of the Jews returned from exile with the people of the land might have produced a new and different Judaism, or a new religion altogether, more tolerant, more peaceable, a religion that would have saved, and might be continuing to save, the Middle East much pain and suffering. But the suggestion, he acknowledges, is foolishness. History is not a science. We can't run a control at the same time we pursue an experiment. So, even if we know that Ezra ended the practice of mixed marriage, we don't know that his doing so is what perpetuated Judaism, so Jesus could be born a Jew.

Then, what do we learn from Ezra, especially from this particular story? Is the moral: we must separate ourselves to preserve the faith?

Perhaps. That is, if Ezra has the last word. If history does not go on. But history does go on. It has that frightening, inexorable way about it.

At the beginning of Ezra, the people are returning to the land, a small knot of them. But at the end of Matthew, a smaller knot of people is unloosed and sent out. And, according to Luke in Acts, they go out from Jerusalem and Judea, the setting of Ezra, and they go into Samaria, and they go to the ends of the earth.

In Samaria, certainly one origin of the alien wives, Philip runs into an Ethiopian eunuch—not one of Ezra's people. Still, this man has come to Jerusalem to worship. But now, he's on his way home confused. And Philip, according to Acts 8, opening up the scriptures to him, beginning with the passage he was reading in Isaiah and leading him to Jesus Christ. They go by some water, and the eunuch says, "Look, water. What is to prevent my being baptized?"

"Nothing," Philip says, in essence. There is nothing to prevent the Ethiopian eunuch's being baptized, and Philip baptizes him. Then, just as quickly as Philip has appeared, he disappears. He's snatched up and whirled away somewhere else. For he has to preach in Caesarea. The good news is for all nations, everyone, to the end of the earth.

In our religious history as Christians, something significant has changed. We have come from the inward-looking society of Ezra to the outward-looking mission of Philip. More: in the nation of Ezra, any decision concerning what is right is taken to the one closest to the inside. It is clear where the religious power lies. In the dispersion of Philip, the outsider can propose a new rule: "Why can't I be baptized?" And the insider replies: "I don't know. You can." Where is the power now?