Ezra 10:7 Commentary and Bible Study

They gather together by arrangement in the street outside the temple. There is a penalty for those who won't come. They will forfeit their smallholdings and their goods, everything they possess, and they will be excluded from the nation of Israel, Judah, as it was now. That would be no mean achievement. The date is given and we find from another piece of data later on that it took exactly three months to exercise the disciplines through the justices. ‘And all people sat in the streets of the house of God trembling.’ There seems to have been something akin to an awakening, because there's a tremendous sense of awareness of the seriousness of this for the whole land. The offence of the 136 that had never been dealt with, never been reproved, never been checked, was a blight on the whole country. Were they going to lose their privilege? Having come back and re-established themselves and achieved much already, were they now going to be cast off again? ‘Trembling because of this matter and for the great rain.’ They trembled for two reasons. As well as the cold, there was an awareness of the holiness of God, the seriousness of this head-on breaking of his commands.