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Nehemiah 13
The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.
Separation from the mixed multitude
1 On that day they read in the book of Moses in the hearing of the people, and in it was found written that an Ammonite or a Moabite should not enter the assembly of Elohim forever, 2 because they did not meet the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them; yet our Elohim turned the curse into a blessing. 3 And when they heard the Torah, they separated from Israel all the mixed multitude.
Nehemiah cleanses the house of Elohim
4 Now before this, Eliashib the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our Elohim, and who was related to Tobiah, 5 had prepared for him a large chamber, where formerly they had put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the tithes of the grain, the new wine and the fresh oil, which were commanded for the Levites, the singers and the gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priests. 6 But during all this I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had gone to the king. And after some time I asked leave of the king, 7 and I came to Jerusalem. Then I understood the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in preparing a chamber for him in the courts of the house of Elohim. 8 And it displeased me greatly, and I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber. 9 Then I gave orders, and they cleansed the chambers; and I brought back there the vessels of the house of Elohim, with the grain offering and the frankincense.
The portions of the Levites
10 I also learned that the portions of the Levites had not been given them, so that the Levites and the singers who did the work had fled, each to his field. 11 So I contended with the officials and said, "Why is the house of Elohim forsaken?" And I gathered them together and set them in their places. 12 Then all Judah brought the tithe of the grain, the new wine and the fresh oil into the storehouses. 13 And I appointed as treasurers over the storehouses Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe and Pedaiah of the Levites, and next to them Hanan the son of Zaccur, the son of Mattaniah; for they were counted faithful, and their duty was to distribute to their brothers. 14 Remember me, O my Elohim, concerning this, and do not wipe out my loyal deeds that I have done for the house of my Elohim and for its services.
The Shabbat kept holy
15 In those days I saw in Judah people treading winepresses on the Shabbat, and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys, as well as wine, grapes, figs and all kinds of loads, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Shabbat day. And I warned them on the day they sold provisions. 16 Men of Tyre also lived there, who brought in fish and all kinds of wares and sold them on the Shabbat to the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem. 17 Then I contended with the nobles of Judah and said to them, "What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the Shabbat day? 18 Did not your fathers do so, and did not our Elohim bring all this evil on us and on this city? Yet you are adding more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Shabbat."
19 And when the gates of Jerusalem began to grow dark before the Shabbat, I gave orders, and the doors were shut; and I ordered that they should not be opened until after the Shabbat. And I stationed some of my servants at the gates, so that no load should be brought in on the Shabbat day. 20 So the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares spent the night outside Jerusalem once or twice. 21 Then I warned them and said to them, "Why are you spending the night in front of the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you." From that time on they did not come on the Shabbat. 22 And I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates, to keep the Shabbat day holy. For this also remember me, O my Elohim, and spare me according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness.
The mixed marriages
23 In those days also I saw Jews who had taken wives of Ashdod, of Ammon and of Moab. 24 And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they did not know how to speak Judean, but spoke the language of one people or another. 25 So I contended with them and cursed them, and struck some of their men and pulled out their hair; and I made them swear by Elohim, saying, "You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. 26 Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his Elohim, and Elohim made him king over all Israel; yet even him the foreign women caused to sin. 27 Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil, acting unfaithfully against our Elohim by taking foreign wives?"
28 And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite; so I chased him away from me. 29 Remember them, O my Elohim, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites. 30 Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and of the Levites, each in his work, 31 and provided for the wood offering at appointed times, and for the firstfruits. Remember me for good, O my Elohim.
Notes
- 13:1 The reading is from Deuteronomy 23:3-5: "An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the assembly of Yahweh… because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam." "The mixed multitude" (erev) of verse 3 is the word used of those who went up out of Egypt with Israel (Exodus 12:38); here it probably means people of foreign descent within the assembly, though the text does not say exactly who they were. Scripture also tells how Ruth the Moabite, who bound herself to Israel's people and Israel's Elohim (Ruth 1:16), became the great-grandmother of David (Ruth 4:13-17); see the note on Deuteronomy 23:3.
- 13:6 The thirty-second year of Artaxerxes I is usually dated about 433/432 BC, twelve years after Nehemiah first came (2:1; 5:14). Persian kings held Babylon and could be called "king of Babylon," as Cyrus is in Ezra 5:13. How long Nehemiah stayed away is not said ("after some time" is literally "at the end of days"), but it was long enough for these things to happen.
- 13:19 The gates were shut when they "began to grow dark before the Shabbat" because the biblical day begins at evening: "from evening to evening you shall keep your Shabbat" (Leviticus 23:32; compare Genesis 1:5). In the first century Josephus tells of a priest who stood on a tower of the temple and blew a trumpet at evening to announce the coming of the seventh day (Jewish War 4.582), and Luke notes that the Shabbat was about to begin as Yeshua was buried (Luke 23:54). Jeremiah had warned against carrying loads through the gates of Jerusalem on the Shabbat (Jeremiah 17:21-27), and Nehemiah's words in verse 18 recall that warning.
- 13:26 Nehemiah points to the greatest king of Israel's past. Yahweh had promised Solomon that "there shall be no one like you among the kings all your days" (1 Kings 3:13), and at his birth "Yahweh loved him" and named him Jedidiah, "beloved of Yah" (2 Samuel 12:24-25). Yet "his wives turned away his heart after other gods" (1 Kings 11:4). As in Ezra (see the note on Ezra 10:11), the danger named is the turning of hearts from Yahweh to other gods, not ancestry as such: the children of verse 24 could no longer even speak the language in which the Torah was read.
- 13:28 A grandson of the high priest had married into the family of Sanballat, most likely the governor of Samaria and Nehemiah's old opponent (2:10; 4:1-2). Josephus, writing in the first century AD, tells a similar story: Manasseh, brother of the high priest Jaddua, married Nikaso, daughter of a Sanballat; when the elders of Jerusalem barred him from the altar, his father-in-law promised to build him a temple on Mount Gerizim, and Josephus says it was built with the permission of Alexander the Great (Antiquities 11.302-312, 321-324). So Josephus places the story about a century after Nehemiah, and scholars debate whether he has moved this event or describes another Sanballat of the same family. The Samaritans' worship on Gerizim is the background of John 4:20.
- 13:31 With this prayer the book of Ezra-Nehemiah ends (counted as one book in Jewish tradition; see the note on Ezra 1:1). It is the last of Nehemiah's short "remember" prayers (5:19; 6:14; 13:14, 22, 29), and it repeats the opening words of 5:19. In verse 14 he asked Elohim not to wipe out his "loyal deeds" (chasadai, from chesed), but in verse 22 he rested his hope on "the greatness of Your lovingkindness" (chesed): what Nehemiah did for the house of Elohim he leaves in the hands of Elohim's own faithfulness.