EZRA CHAPTER 9 Ezra and others, hearing of the unlawful marriage of the people with strangers, mourn for it, Ezra 9:1-4. He prayeth unto God, and confesseth their sins, and particularly this, Ezra 9:5-15. The princes; who feared God, and understood that Ezra was come with large commission from the king, and with this design, to reform all disorders, whereof this was not the least. From the people of the lands, i.e. from the heathen nations round about them, which God had expressly commanded them to do, Deuteronomy 7:2,3. Doing according to their abominations, to wit, either,
1. Marrying promiscuously whomsoever they liked, as the heathens used to do; or,
2. Imitating them in their idolatrous or other wicked practices, into which they were drawn by their heathenish affinities; although they are not charged with any other crime besides their marriage in the following account of it.