We will not intermarry with the foreigners living in our land.

Jewish men were marrying foreign women, and so God's holy people had become contaminated. The leaders and officials were the chief offenders.

that you gave us through your servants, the prophets. They told us that the land we were going to occupy was an impure land because the people who lived in it filled it from one end to the other with disgusting, filthy actions.

They told us that we were never to intermarry with those people and never to help them prosper or succeed if we wanted to enjoy the land and pass it on to our descendants forever.

Ezra the priest stood up and spoke to them. He said, "You have been faithless and have brought guilt on Israel by marrying foreign women.

All these men had foreign wives. They divorced them and sent them and their children away.

Do not try to work together as equals with unbelievers, for it cannot be done. How can right and wrong be partners? How can light and darkness live together?

After the Philistines captured the Covenant Box, they carried it from Ebenezer to their city of Ashdod,