Intermarriage

Ezra 10:10 The land that you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. 12 Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.’ ...18 Now there were found some of the sons of the priests who had married foreign women...19 They pledged themselves to put away their wives
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On one hand I understand that God is giving the Jews practical instuction on how to avoid mixing with a bad crowd. On the other hand, it seems uncharacteristic of Him to condone the abandonment of the foreign wives and children once they have been grafted into the family. I struggle with this passage both in implication and application. Should I read it symbolically for my own life, looking for parallels for pure living, or would the equivelant be marrying a non-Christian? On one hand, the laws of the Old Testament were much more lenient on divorce than Jesus. At the same time, the New Testament teachings seem to be much for graceful to those outside the family DNA, so to speak. Wouldn't God want these foreign wives and children to be loved? Perhaps it would have been better, rather than putting their wives and children out, to lay themselves before the Lord and repent, asking for a way to sacrifice themselves on behalf of their families. It seems to me that this is what Jesus did and therefore what they could have done.