Verse 2. - Jehiel. Probably the "Jehiel" mentioned again in ver. 26, who was "of the sons of Elam," and had married an idolatrous wife. Yet now there is hope. The penitence of the people, evidenced by their "sore weeping, gave hope that they might be brought to amend their ways and return to God.
10:1-5 Shechaniah owned the national guilt. The case is sad, but it is not desperate; the disease threatening, but not incurable. Now that the people begin to lament, a spirit of repentance seems to be poured out; now there is hope that God will forgive, and have mercy. The sin that rightly troubles us, shall not ruin us. In melancholy times we must observe what makes for us, as well as against us. And there may be good hopes through grace, even where there is the sense of great guilt before God. The case is plain; what has been done amiss, must be undone again as far as possible; nothing less than this is true repentance. Sin must be put away, with a resolution never to have any thing more to do with it. What has been unjustly got, must be restored. Arise, be of good courage. Weeping, in this case, is good, but reforming is better. As to being unequally yoked with unbelievers, such marriages, it is certain, are sinful, and ought not to be made; but now they are not null, as they were before the gospel did away the separation between Jews and Gentiles.
And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra,.... This man seems to be one of those that now came with Ezra from Babylon, see Ezra 8:3,
we have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land; not that he had taken any himself, being but just come into the land, nor is his name in the list of those that had; but inasmuch as many of the nation, of which he was a part, and his own father, and several of his uncles had, Ezra 10:26, he expresses himself in this manner:
yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing; of a reformation of this evil, and of pardon for it.
we have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land; not that he had taken any himself, being but just come into the land, nor is his name in the list of those that had; but inasmuch as many of the nation, of which he was a part, and his own father, and several of his uncles had, Ezra 10:26, he expresses himself in this manner:
yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing; of a reformation of this evil, and of pardon for it.