Under Nehemiah’s ministry, the Jews were leaving a great time of reformation and national reorganization. They committed themselves to read, understand and practice the law of God again. The reality that they were living would require a lot of changes and adjustment in order to fully obey the commandments of the law of the Lord.
The priest Ezra led them into a powerful confession of sins in which he admitted that the reason for their disgrace was that they disobeyed the Lord since they were delivered from Egypt (9:16) but also recognized that God’s faithfulness was always there with them trying to bring them back to his love.
He says, “Many years you were patient with them, and warned them by your spirit through your prophets; yet they would not listen. Therefore, you handed them over to the people of the land. Nevertheless, in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God” (9:30-31)
Radical decisions were made in order to maintain the new order and new transformation that were taking place among them, like enrolling people by their genealogy, expulsing the foreigners from the descendents of Ammon or Moab that did not belong to their lineage and separating mixed marriage. The major reason to do that was that those people normally will influence them to worship false gods and will press them to do their unacceptable practices.
Like I said before this kind of decisions, specially the one that forced the Israelites to separate themselves from their wives and children would be unacceptable for us in this time, but according to their understanding, this was the only way to keep the purity of their devotion to God.
We have to be very careful with our Bible reading because, there are particular times when the only way out was the contrary, a Jew was led by God to marry a non Jew person such was the case of Boaz the ancestor of David ( Ruth 4: 13-18) or Esther who is our next Bible story.