Nehemiahchapter 13
31 verses · BSBNehemiah book hub →
Speaks with:Nehemiah 13×14Nehemiah 10×9Nehemiah 12×6Ezra 10×3Nehemiah 2×3Deuteronomy 23×2
Summary
Chapter summary
The last chapter is every reform having to be made a second time. Reading in the book of Moses, they separate the mixed multitude. Nehemiah had returned to the king; coming back, he finds that Eliashib had prepared Tobiah a great chamber in the very courts of the house of God: 'and it grieved me sore: therefore I cast forth all the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber.' The Levites' portions had gone unpaid and the singers had fled to their fields; he sets them again in their place. He shuts the gates against sabbath traffic, and contends with those who married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab, whose children could not speak the Jews' language. 'Remember me, O my God, for good.'
Context
History · Nehemiah — Nehemiah overview
- A. 1–9 Tobiah's furniture thrown out of the temple chamber
- B. 10–14 The Levites had fled to their fields: remember me, O my God
- C. 15–22 Winepresses on the sabbath, and the gates shut at dusk
- D. 23–31 Children who could not speak the Jews' language, and a priest chased away
The outline
A.Tobiah's furniture thrown out of the temple chambervv. 1 to 9
Read vv. 1 to 9 →B.The Levites had fled to their fields: remember me, O my Godvv. 10 to 14
Read vv. 10 to 14 →C.Winepresses on the sabbath, and the gates shut at duskvv. 15 to 22
Read vv. 15 to 22 →D.Children who could not speak the Jews' language, and a priest chased awayvv. 23 to 31
Read vv. 23 to 31 →
The world behind this chapter
Nehemiah 13The history
Nehemiah had gone back to Susa to report — a Persian governor served at the king's pleasure and returned when summoned. When he came back, everything on the signed list had slipped, and the chapter goes through the failures in order.
Tobiah, the old opponent, had been given a large chamber inside the temple courts by a priest related to him by marriage — a storeroom meant for grain, incense and vessels turned into a guest apartment. Nehemiah threw the furniture out into the street. The Levites had not been paid their portions, so they had left the temple and gone back to their fields; he brought them back and reappointed treasurers.
Then the Sabbath. He found winepresses working, loads being brought in on donkeys, and Tyrian fish merchants selling in Jerusalem on the day. Tyre's dried-fish trade down the coast was long-established business. He ordered the gates shut from dusk before the Sabbath until it was over, and when traders camped outside the wall he threatened to lay hands on them.
Last, the mixed marriages had come back, and he found children who could not speak the language of Judah. He records his own conduct plainly: he contended with them, cursed them, struck some, and pulled out their hair.
What it meant to them
This is a deliberately unsatisfying ending, and it is the honest one. Everything gained in the book had to be fought for a second time within about a decade.
Four times in the chapter Nehemiah stops the narrative to pray, "Remember me, O my God, for good." That is how the historical books of the Old Testament close: a reformer with a broken covenant on his hands, asking God to remember his work — and a people still waiting for a change of heart that laws and walls could not give them.
Sources cited
- Edwin Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation)
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Nehemiah 13. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.