When the Jews returned from Babylonian exile they moved back into Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. But, there were already people living in the land. Many of the people in the land were Samaritans which were a people with a mixed linage of Jew and Gentile. During the eighty years between the return of the Jews until Ezra the scribe arrived (538-458 BC) the Jews had intermarried with the Samaritans and were corrupting the linage of Abraham’s covenant people.

The main issue was that the pagans, or, in most of the cases in Ezra day (458 BC), the Samaritans, had other gods and pagan cultures that did not honor or recognize the Lord. The social problem that had been created was that many of the Jewish men had already married and had children with a pagan Samaritan wife. A resolution had to be found and it would be drastic.

A list was compiled of those who had intermarried with the Samaritans, and the list of priests with foreign families is found in Ezra 10:18-44. An oath was taken "to send away all the foreign wives and their children." (Ezra 10:2-7)

“I have read, in Greek and Latin, scores of myths but I did not find the slightest flavor of myth here.”
– E.M. Blaiklock commenting on the New Testament

Almost half the Psalms are complaints! They are songs of sorrow, loss, disappointments and calls for help. We would most likely play them in minor chords or sing them as the blues. Yet, within these songs of grief there is hope expressed in God. The complaints are common among men, but the distinguishing factor was the hope expressed in a living god when the psalmists was willing to wait for God.