Balaam-like, Satan can’t curse God’s people, but he can turn the blessing of marriage into a battlefield.
Do you recall Ezra’s purpose in coming back to Jerusalem? “Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:10). And do you remember what Artaxerxes expressed as the role he saw Ezra fulfilling? “You are being sent by the king and his seven counselors to inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, with regard to the Law of your God which is in your hand” (v 14). Ezra’s intention was to be prescriptive, laying out the divine solution to life in general and Jewish worship in particular. But Artaxerxes, perhaps with his experience in administering his empire, was sending Ezra to be diagnostic. He knew it wasn’t enough to declare the laws; there must also be assessment of the peoples’ performance. When we begin reading Ezra 9, we have the impression from the opening words, “When these things were done” (v 1), that the events described immediately follow chapter 8. But a little later we’ll find that a period of almost five months had intervened (see 7:9; 10:9). Evidently during this time a serious problem had been uncovered, as the leaders expressed it to God’s man. “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, with respect to the abominations of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters as wives…so that the holy seed is mixed with the peoples of those lands” (9:1-2). Going back to the days of Balaam, this was the devil’s ploy to destroy God’s plan. It’s a shocking fact that the only two choices for God’s people in every age are separation or abomination. Watch out!