Nehemiah13chapter 13

Nehemiah 13:1-3

The public reading turns up an old law few had thought of, Deuteronomy's ban on Ammonite and Moabite entering the congregation, and Nehemiah's memoir reports that the assembly acts on it the same day. The law behind it cites two things: the nations' refusal of bread and water to Israel in the wilderness and Balaam hired to curse them, which God turned into a blessing. Once the reading names the mixed multitude, Israel separates itself from it, a reform driven by the text with no royal decree behind it. Keil dates this reading to some occasion after Nehemiah's return rather than to the wall's dedication six months earlier, and Wesley reads it the same way.

Nehemiah 13:4-5

Eliashib the priest, in charge of the temple chambers, is by family tie allied unto Tobiah, the Ammonite adversary who mocked the wall's building in chapter four. He prepares a great chamber for him inside the temple courts, the very room that once held the meat offerings, frankincense, tithes and vessels for the Levites, singers and porters. The text does not say this Eliashib is the high priest of chapter three, but Jamieson Fausset and Brown identify him so, noting the same man's grandson is named at 13:28. Enemy and temple, kept apart through the whole book, meet under one roof the moment Nehemiah's back is turned.

Nehemiah 13:6-7

Nehemiah breaks his own narrative to explain the lapse: in the thirty second year of Artaxerxes he had gone back to the king in Babylon, and only after some time got leave to return. The gap gave Eliashib room to act, and Nehemiah frames it plainly, he was not at Jerusalem when the chamber was prepared for Tobiah. Coming back, he learns of the evil Eliashib had done, a chamber built for an enemy inside the courts of the house of God itself. Clarke reckons the absence at about a year, between a twelve year governorship and this second term.

Nehemiah 13:8-9

The report grieves Nehemiah sore, and his response is physical: he throws the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber with his own hand, the same directness he later shows the sabbath breakers and the mixed marriages. He then commands the rooms cleansed and restores the meat offering, the frankincense and the vessels of the house of God to their place. Gill reads the cleansing as more than sweeping, a ceremonial purification after a Gentile's lodging defiled a holy room. The act reverses Eliashib's exactly: what one priest gave to an enemy, Nehemiah's own hands take back for God.

Nehemiah 13:10-11

With the priesthood corrupted, the failure of its provision is no surprise: the portions of the Levites had not been given them, so the Levites and singers had abandoned the temple service and gone back to their own fields to live. Nehemiah's question cuts to the point, why is the house of God forsaken, an echo of the very covenant the people had signed at 10:39 promising never to forsake it. He gathers the scattered Levites and singers and sets them back in their place. Henry reads the picture as a warning for every age: a minister who must farm to eat will not long stay at the altar.

Nehemiah 13:12-14

Once the portions are restored, all Judah brings the tithe of the corn, the new wine and the oil into the treasuries again, obedience following correction. Nehemiah appoints treasurers over the stores, Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe and Pedaiah the Levite, chosen because they were counted faithful, their office to distribute fairly to the rest. The chapter's first refrain follows: Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God. Clarke reads the plea as a man asking mercy rather than claiming merit, since a strict reckoning would wipe out his good works along with his failures.

Nehemiah 13:15-16

Nehemiah's next target is commerce on the sabbath: men treading wine presses on the sabbath, loading grain, wine, grapes and figs onto asses and carrying every kind of burden into Jerusalem to sell. Men of Tyre settle in the city and sell fish and other wares on the sabbath to the children of Judah, a foreign colony trading inside the walls Nehemiah had just rebuilt. Henry ties the sabbath breaking directly to the wider decay of religion he had already found among the priesthood, one profanation feeding the next. Wesley notes the aggravation in the detail: this trading happens in Jerusalem itself, the city where God's house stood and the nation's courts sat.

Nehemiah 13:17-18

Nehemiah confronts the nobles directly, the men whose example let the markets open: what evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day? He presses the argument from the nation's own history, did not your fathers do this very thing, and did not our God bring all this evil upon the city for it, so that further sabbath breaking only adds to a wrath already spent once. Gill reads the nobles as the city's civil rulers rather than the priesthood contended with earlier, a second front in the same reform. The appeal to the exile as sabbath judgment reaches back to Jeremiah's own charge before Judah ever left the land.

Nehemiah 13:19-20

Nehemiah moves from argument to enforcement: as the gates of Jerusalem grow dark before the sabbath he orders that the gates should be shut, not to open again until the sabbath has passed, and he posts his own servants there to keep any burden from entering. The merchants and sellers of every kind of ware, turned away from the gates, camp outside the city walls once or twice rather than lose the trade. Jamieson Fausset and Brown read the closed gates as the decisive step after argument had failed with both priests and nobles, a governor finally using his office's power. Adeney notes the same firmness that finished a wall in fifty two days now polices a sabbath.

Nehemiah 13:21-22

Nehemiah warns the merchants camped outside, why lodge ye about the wall, and threatens to lay hands on them if they do it again, and the text records that they stop coming on the sabbath after that. He then charges the Levites to purify themselves and stand watch at the gates, so the sabbath is guarded by the men whose office it already was to keep it holy. The chapter's second refrain follows, Remember me, O my God, concerning this also, and spare me according to the greatness of thy mercy. Clarke reads the closing plea as proof Nehemiah expected nothing from his own good deeds, resting the whole appeal on mercy instead of merit.

Nehemiah 13:23-24

The last reform returns to the crisis Ezra had already fought once: Jews who had married wives of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab, the same nations named in the chapter's opening reading. The children of these marriages could no longer speak the language of Judah, only the speech of Ashdod or whichever mother raised them, a household split in two tongues under one roof. Clarke pictures brothers in the same family unable to understand each other, half raised in Hebrew and half in a foreign speech. Gill notes Ashdod itself was not one of the seven nations under the old conquest ban, yet intermarriage with it still corrupted the people's language and worship alike.

Nehemiah 13:25-27

Nehemiah's response is the sharpest in the book: he contends with the offenders, curses them, strikes some of them and plucked off their hair, then puts them under oath never to intermarry with these nations again. The gesture stands beside Ezra's own response to the same sin a generation earlier: at Ezra 9:3 he plucked off his own hair in grief, while here Nehemiah plucks the hair of the guilty, the same crisis met by two reformers of very different temperament. He argues from Israel's own history: did not Solomon himself sin by these very things, a king beloved of God and given all Israel, yet outlandish women caused even him to sin. Henry reads Solomon's fall as proof that no office and no past favor with God protects a man once foreign wives turn his heart.

Nehemiah 13:28-29

son in law to Sanballat: The corruption reaches the high priest's own family: a son of Joiada, grandson of Eliashib the high priest, has become son in law to Sanballat the Horonite, the very enemy who opposed the wall from its first stone. Nehemiah chases him out, and Clarke identifies him with Manasseh, whom Josephus says later became high priest of a rival temple Sanballat built on Mount Gerizim for him. Nehemiah's prayer turns harder here than anywhere else in the chapter: Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites. Henry reads the prayer as a plea for God to act rather than a curse Nehemiah pronounces himself, leaving the reckoning in God's hand.

Nehemiah 13:30-31

The chapter closes on a summary of the whole second term: thus cleansed I them from all strangers, and set the priests and Levites back in their courses, every one to his own business. He restores the wood offering at its appointed times and the firstfruits, the practical supply lines of temple worship put back in place. The book's last words are its third and final refrain, Remember me, O my God, for good, the same prayer sounded at 13:14 and 13:22, and this time without any accusation to answer, only a plea for God's favor. Gill notes that with this prayer both Nehemiah's memoir and the whole historical narrative of the Hebrew canon end, a book that began with a report of ruined walls closing on a man still asking to be remembered.