Ezra 10:3, 44; 1 Esdras 9:36
The last verse of Ezra: what happened to the children?
Ezra's last sentence is grammatically difficult: "and some of them had wives, and they set (?) sons." Translations make it "by whom they had children." 1 Esdras 9:36 ends instead: "and they put them away with their children."
Read Ezra 10:3, 44; 1 Esdras 9:36 in every edition
Manuscript variant: witnesses differ in wording
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
- Related (shared ancestry)
The children in Ezra 10
- 10:3 (proposal)
- "Put away all the wives, and such as are born of them"
- 10:11 (command)
- "Separate yourselves… from the strange wives": children not mentioned
- 10:44 (Hebrew)
- Difficult; children mentioned, outcome not stated
- 1 Esdras 9:36
- "They put them away with their children"
Every witness, in order
Composed c. 5th–4th century BC (debated)
Original Ezra–Nehemiah
No original survives.
Composed c. 2nd century BC (debated)
1 Esdras (Esdras A), library's Greek (Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
Tous ceux-là avaient épousé des femmes étrangères, et ils les renvoyèrent avec les enfants qu'ils en avaient eus.
1 Esdras 9:36. One Greek text via Giguet's French; not checked against Hanhart's Göttingen edition.
Translated c. 2nd–1st century BC
Septuagint, Esdras B (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
Tels furent ceux qui avaient épousé des femmes étrangères, et qui en avaient eu des enfants.
One Greek text via Giguet's French; not checked against Hanhart's Göttingen edition.
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate (1 Esdras = Ezra)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
Omnes hi acceperant uxores alienigenas, et fuerunt ex eis mulieres, quae pepererant filios.
"Women who had borne sons."
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
כָּל־אֵלֶּה נָשְׂאוּ נָשִׁים נָכְרִיּוֹת וְיֵשׁ מֵהֶם נָשִׁים וַיָּשִׂימוּ בָּנִים
all these had taken foreign wives, and some of them had wives, and they set / placed sons
The verb wayyasimu is unexpected; many scholars emend to "they had borne."
1611
1 Esdras in the King James Apocrypha (1611)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
All these had taken strange wives, and they put them away with their children.
1 Esdras 9:36.
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
All these had taken strange wives: and some of them had wives by whom they had children.
What changed, and why
1 Esdras may preserve an older reading (a Hebrew text such as "and they sent them away with children") or may interpret Ezra's difficult ending. The site does not claim to know what happened to the children, and does not invent the women's testimony. The book ends with the difficulty in plain view.
What the evidence shows
- The Hebrew of Ezra 10:44 is difficult.
- 1 Esdras 9:36 states that the children were sent away.
- Ezra states what happened to the children.
Sources
- H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (Word Biblical Commentary 16, 1985)
- L. S. Fried, "Text-Critical Issues in Ezra–Nehemiah and 1 Esdras," Oxford Handbook ↗
- E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (2012)
Related lessons
- The Oath, the Separations and an Unfinished Ending →A weeping crowd gathers. Shecaniah proposes a covenant to send away the foreign wives and their children. Ezra makes the leaders swear, and a proclamation summons all the returnees to Jerusalem within three days on pain of losing their property. In the cold rain of the ninth month the assembly agrees, with a few dissenting, and a commission examines the cases for three months. The book ends with a list of over a hundred men, beginning with priests, and a final, difficult sentence about wives and children.
- Investigation: Who Returned? Lists, Land and Identity →Ezra speaks of "the children of the captivity" as if they were all Israel. But many Judeans stayed in Babylonia, many had never left Judah, and the land had other inhabitants. This investigation follows the waves of return, the numbers in the three versions of the list, who counted as a member, who did not, and the women and children of chapter 10 whose experience the book barely records.