Six ways to encounter God here
A passage is not only to be understood; it is to be lived with. Choose how you want to meet God in Ezra 9:1, and Living Bread opens it right there.
The passage in its setting
Meeting God in a verse begins with hearing it where it lives, in the flow of Ezra 9. Read it slowly, and let the focal verse settle into its own context.
1 Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.
2 For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass.
3 And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied.
The web of Scripture around it
Where this passage echoes across the Bible, from the cross-reference graph, 14 connected Scriptures. Each one is a door to meet God there too.
- Leviticus 18:24
Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:
- Nehemiah 9:2
And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers, and stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers.
- Ezra 10:10
And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.
- Romans 2:17
Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God,
- Deuteronomy 12:30
Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve…
- Exodus 33:16
For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people …
- Deuteronomy 23:3
An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever:
- Jeremiah 26:10
When the princes of Judah heard these things, then they came up from the king’s house unto the house of the LORD, and sat down in the entry of the new gate of the LORD’s house.
- 2 Corinthians 6:14
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
- 1 Kings 11:1
But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites;
- 1 Kings 11:5
For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
- Genesis 15:19
The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,
- Ezra 10:8
And that whosoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the elders, all his substance should be forfeited, and himself separated from the congregatio…
- Exodus 13:5
And it shall be when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he sware unto thy fathers to giv…
More to meet God in Ezra
How it points to Christ
Every Scripture ultimately leads to Jesus. See how the whole Bible points to Him in Christ in all Scripture, then meet Him for yourself.
