Translations:Does the divorce of the foreign women in Ezra 9-10 show that civil government has authority to dissolve marriages or preside over "divorce trials"?/10/en

These marriages were clearly illegal by the standards of Biblical law. Some people note that Ezra 9:1 mentions "Egyptians", "Ammonites," and "Moabites", people groups that were not in the Deut. 7:1 list. But this does not change the illegal nature of the marriages, because the point of the original law was to prevent God's people from "following the abominations" (Ezra 9:1: e.g. idolatry, incest, etc) of the Canaanite peoples (see Deut. 7:4, Lev. 18:26-30). There were probably many Egyptians, Ammonites, and Moabites who had intermarried with the Canaanite peoples and would therefore endanger anyone who tried to form a covenant with them. All such joining of covenant members with idolaters was illegal. This was Ezra's concern.