How to read this page

An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

Graph View — tap the constellation icon in the top bar to see this page's connections as a web of light: gold points are passages, and the coloured threads are the connection types. Click any type in the graph's own legend to filter it in or out, and use the expand control for the full-screen night sky.

New to a term? The Glossary explains every abbreviation and term on the site in plain words.

Intertextuality Pair

Ezra 10:10 → Exodus 34:16

Allusion

Later text

Ezra 10:10BSB

Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, "You have been unfaithful by marrying foreign women, adding to the guilt of Israel.

Earlier text

Exodus 34:16BSB

And when you take some of their daughters as brides for your sons, their daughters will prostitute themselves to their gods and cause your sons to do the same.

Significance

Exodus 34:16 prohibited taking foreign wives because they would lead Israel to "prostitute themselves to their gods." Ezra 10:10 directly applies this prohibition to the post-exilic community: "You have been unfaithful (מְעַלְתֶּם, me'altem) by marrying foreign women (נָשִׁים נָכְרִיּוֹת, nashim nokhriyyot), adding to the guilt of Israel." Ezra's use of the term מַעַל (ma'al, "unfaithfulness/treachery") frames intermarriage not merely as a social concern but as covenant betrayal — the very danger Moses warned about at Sinai. The post-exilic community, having just returned from the exile that resulted partly from such unfaithfulness, now faces the same temptation, making Ezra's appeal to separation an urgent call to avoid repeating the pattern that led to judgment.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme — the Sinai covenant's intermarriage warning (Exod 34:16, foreign daughters who "prostitute themselves to their gods") runs forward as the standard by which Ezra names the post-exilic marriages מַעַל, covenant unfaithfulness ("You have been unfaithful by marrying foreign women"), extending the canon's covenant-faithfulness-versus-spiritual-adultery thread into the restoration community.

Linked Mentions 1

Trajectory Tables 1

Spiritual Adultery (Covenant Faithfulness and Idolatry) Trajectory Table