Ezra tears his garment, pulls hair from his head and beard, and sits in stunned silence until evening.

The news: many returned exiles, including priests and Levites, have taken foreign wives. The people who survived Babylonian exile, who were carried back under Cyrus’s decree, who have been rebuilding the temple, have intermarried with surrounding populations.

The solution the community arrives at under Ezra’s leadership is the one modern readers find most difficult: the foreign wives and their children will be sent away. The marriages dissolved. The families separated. The women and children will go.