Pethahiah פְּתַחְיָה

Pethahiah was a Levite who had married a foreign woman, according to Ezr.10.23. After the Babylonian exile, Ezra led a religious reform that required the Israelites to separate from their foreign wives to maintain the purity of the Jewish faith and lineage. Pethahiah was among the Levites who had taken foreign wives and agreed to put them away as part of this reform. This event demonstrates the importance of religious and ethnic identity in the post-exilic Jewish community.