STRANGE WIFE

"Strange" as contrasted with "an Israelite." Such wives are spoken of in the King James Version Ezra 10:2,11 (the English Revised Version "strange women," the American Standard Revised Version "foreign women"; see STRANGER AND SOJOURNER (IN THE APOCRYPHA AND THE NEW TESTAMENT) ; in the parallel 1 Esdras 8:68 through 9:37, the King James Version uses "strange wives" and "strange women" indifferently, and the Revised Version (British and American) here follows the King James Version) as "wives of the people of the land," in taking whom the men of Israel are said to have "trespassed against their God." Accordingly such wives were "put away."

From the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.