ABSTRACT
This chapter concludes the book and summarizes the primary insights of this analysis of masculinities in Ezra 9–10, which has sought to shed light on how masculinities are performed, embodied and disputed in this narrative world. This endeavour is not, however, an end in itself, nor does it omit the foreign women and their expulsion from consideration. Rather, it makes visible how the foreign women, their bodies, social locations, reproductive capacity, silence and expulsion are appropriated as vehicles for the configuration of golah masculinities and the masculinity of Yhwh. The call for the expulsion of the women and children as an act of fidelity to Yhwh brings the transgressive masculinity of their husbands under the ‘management’ of those gathered around Ezra and the Torah. The chapter concludes with a first-person reflection on the persistence of this gendered dynamic in modern contexts and its implications for the agenda of gender-critical and feminist biblical studies.
