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able-bodied men, were permitted to return from Babylon to their homeland, Palestine. Through the priest Ezra, in alliance with Nehemiah, who protected and supported him, Jewish legislation was established. Jews regard Ezra as the man who rebuilt their glory and that of the Jewish people. It is therefore no wonder, the text says, that they regarded him as Moses's worthy successor.

This legislation supposedly created the Jewish people from that time onward. It obliges every Jewish man not to marry a non-Jewish woman, and declares that every woman of foreign race and her children may not enter or be considered part of the Jewish people. Since this legislation - described as the cornerstone in forming Jewish national unity - was established, a Jewish man has only rarely married a non-Jewish woman.

While this legislation is said to oblige the Jewish man not to marry a non-Jewish woman in order to preserve the lineage, it permitted the Jewish girl to mix with and be bound to foreign men through marriage. The Jews, through the Jewish woman Esther, described here as the Persian king Ahasuerus's mistress, were able to prevent the massacre that his minister had prepared for the Jews. The result was that the minister and his men were hanged on the same gallows he had prepared for the Jews, leading the Jews to place Esther among the saints. Such intermarriage, the chapter alleges, allowed Jewish blood to seep into the veins of other peoples without permitting foreign blood to enter it.