So the story goes (Ezra 9, 10) ... Ezra returns to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon and finds that many of Jewish people including officials and priests in the neighboring countries had inter-married with foreign women in violation of one of God's commandments. Ezra weeps, tears his clothes, bows and prays at an altar until Shecaniah makes the suggestion to send these women and their children away. So it was done eventually, all the men that had foreign wives divorced them and sent them and their children away.
How did this really go down? Just imagine, the Jewish husband calling out as he enters his home; "Oh Honey, I've got to divorce you and send you and the kids away to please God."
How do you send a foreign women away from the country where she was not the foreigner, but rather the Jewish men were? The neighboring countries were Ammon, Moab, and Egypt. The people were the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and Amorites. How would the Jewish man be treated in the foreign country after he divorced his wife and sent her away with the children? Wouldn't his foreign neighbors think this was a strange way to act?
And the Jewish men agreed to divorce their foreign wives and abandon their children without argument or controversy.
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