Lives of Scripture

After Ezra confronted the returned exiles with the sobering discovery that many Israelite men, including priests and Levites, had married foreign wives who worshiped other gods, the whole assembly gathered in Jerusalem in distress and grief to decide how to respond (Ezra 10:1-14). In the account of that meeting, Shabbethai the Levite is named alongside Meshullam in connection with Jonathan son of Asahel and Jahzeiah son of Tikvah: "Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahzeiah the son of Tikvah stood up against this, and Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite supported them" (Ezra 10:15). The Hebrew here is genuinely difficult, and some translations instead read the four men as being appointed to oversee the difficult process of resolving the marriages, rather than opposing it. Either way, Shabbethai is placed at the center of one of the rawest, most painful reform efforts in Israel's post-exilic story.