Jehiel
Jehiel, one of the descendants of Elam, married a foreign woman during the Exile but agreed to put her away.
Biography
Jehiel was one of the descendants of Elam among those listed in Ezra 10:26 as having married foreign women during the period of the Babylonian exile and its aftermath. In response to Ezra's grief-stricken intercession and the communal assembly that followed, this Jehiel was among those who agreed to dissolve these foreign marriages as part of a covenant renewal commitment. Unlike some instances in the same passage where the outcome is ambiguous, this Jehiel specifically agreed to the separation, a detail that preserves his act of compliance with Ezra's reform. The dissolution of these marriages was painful but deliberate, representing a concrete expression of covenant recommitment by men who chose the community's spiritual integrity over personal domestic arrangements.
Significance
Jehiel's agreement to put away his foreign wife (Ezra 10:26) represents an act of costly covenant obedience in the context of communal restoration. The reform initiated by Ezra was not merely a legal exercise but a theological statement: the returned exiles understood their covenant identity as a boundary-marking gift from God, and the boundaries of marriage were part of how that identity was preserved and transmitted. While the New Testament reconfigures these boundaries in light of Christ (1 Corinthians 7:12-16), the principle of costly obedience to covenant obligations remains. Jehiel's compliance illustrates that genuine spiritual reform sometimes demands painful personal sacrifice in service of communal faithfulness to God's purposes.
Verse Appearances (1)
Ezra
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- Tyndale House, Cambridge (n.d.) Translators Individualised Proper Names with all References (TIPNR). STEPBible. Available at: https://www.stepbible.org. [CC BY 4.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]