Returning from the Persian court, Nehemiah finds the temple chambers let to Tobiah, the Levites unpaid and gone back to their fields, the sabbath treated as a market day, and men married to women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab whose children 'could not speak the language of Judah' (13:24). He acts hard. He contends with the nobles over the sabbath (13:17), and against the marriages he writes, 'I rebuked them and called down curses on them. I beat some of these men and pulled out their hair' (13:25). His stated argument is worship: Solomon, married to foreign wives, was drawn away, and 'yet foreign women drew him into sin' (13:26). Two readings of the severity are held, and the same care governs both that governs Ezra 9-10. Israel's own line already runs through Ruth the Moabitess and Rahab of Jericho, both received by faith, so the concern in view is covenant loyalty rather than descent, and no line of this chapter has ever been a warrant against Jewish people.
A necessary defense of a community that was one generation from disappearing
held by Derek Kidner (Ezra and Nehemiah, TOTC, 1979), Edwin Yamauchi, and commentators reading the reforms against Malachi's parallel rebuke in the same generation (Malachi 2:11)
Yehud was a small province surrounded by larger neighbors, the language of the covenant was already being lost in its own children, and the temple service had collapsed within a decade of Nehemiah leaving.
A record of what Nehemiah did, told without the text commending every measure
held by readers who note that Hebrew narrative regularly reports an action in full without endorsing it, and that Nehemiah's own memoir asks God to weigh the deeds rather than declaring them weighed
The memoir's closing line, 'Remember me, O my God, with favor' (13:31), is a plea submitted for judgment rather than a verdict claimed.
