Zabad
Zabad, son of Hashum, was an Israelite who had married a foreign wife during the Exile.
Biography
Zabad son of Hashum is listed in Ezra 10:33 among the men of Israel who had taken foreign wives and who agreed to send them away during Ezra's sweeping post-exilic reform. He belonged to the household of Hashum, a prominent family among the returning exiles whose ancestors had come back with Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:19; Nehemiah 7:22). Ezra 10 represents a decisive moment of communal self-examination and covenant renewal in which hundreds of men voluntarily submitted their family situations to scrutiny by appointed leaders. Zabad's participation in this process reflects the willingness, however imperfect, of the post-exilic community to subordinate personal circumstances to the demands of covenant holiness and communal spiritual integrity.
Significance
Zabad son of Hashum's appearance in Ezra's dissolution register (Ezra 10:33) contributes to the larger portrait of a community grappling earnestly with questions of holiness and identity following the trauma of exile. The post-exilic community's determination to address the intermarriage problem was fundamentally a theological act, an assertion that they were still bound by Mosaic covenant obligations. Zabad's compliance stands as a small but real act of covenant fidelity, illustrating that genuine religious reform is never merely institutional but touches the most intimate dimensions of individual and family life.
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]