Shemariah
Shemariah, an Israelite who was among those who had married foreign women during the exile.
Biography
This Shemariah is listed among the Israelite men who had taken foreign wives and were required to put them away as part of Ezra's covenant reform (Ezra 10:41). His name appears in a section enumerating men from various families who had violated the Mosaic prohibition against intermarriage with the surrounding peoples. The assembly at Jerusalem, held in the ninth month during a period of heavy rain, was a solemn gathering where the community confronted the seriousness of its breach of covenant. Those who were found to have contracted such marriages agreed to make proper inquiries and take the necessary steps, including the offering of guilt sacrifices. This Shemariah's inclusion in the register marks him as one who participated in this process of communal reckoning.
Significance
Like others named in Ezra 10, this Shemariah represents the individual faces of a communal crisis, the gradual erosion of covenant distinctiveness through intermarriage. The theological concern was not ethnic but religious: marriages with peoples who practiced idolatry risked importing foreign worship into the covenant community. The detailed enumeration of names in Ezra 10 serves a literary and theological purpose, it makes visible the breadth of the problem and the breadth of the repentance. The post-exilic community's willingness to engage in this painful corporate discipline reflects the serious weight they placed on covenant faithfulness, mirroring the call in the New Testament for the church to maintain its distinct identity and holiness.
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]