The Exegesis of Jeremiah in and beyond Ezra 9-10

It is generally recognized that the prohibition against marriage with "foreign" women in Ezra 9-10 reflects a view among the repatriated gola community in Persian Yehud that non-repatriated Jewish groups should be viewed as ethnic outsiders; the chapters draw from Pentateuchal legal traditions (especially Deuteronomy) to justify this position. Several scholars have noted that this partisan/sectarian ideology has roots in the Ezekiel tradition, which informs much of Ezra 7-Nehemiah 13. Nevertheless, a direct antecedent for identifying the homeland women as "foreign" may be found in the book of Jeremiah, which served as the hermeneutical key for the exegetical goals of Ezra 9-10. This connection was recognized by the later Aaronide authors of Ezra 1-6, who amplified and redirected the implications of this relationship by inaugurating their addition to the corpus with a reference to Jeremiah's oracles. By so doing, they extended Aaronide hegemony over Ezra 7-Nehemiah 13, incorporating it and its exegetical engagement of prophetic material into their own priestly-scribal curriculum.