The Promises Are Tested After the Celebration

The passage read is Deuteronomy 23:3, which bars the Ammonite and the Moabite “even to their tenth generation”. Ruth was a Moabitess and great grandmother of David, a tension the rabbis resolved by reading the law as applying to men only (Mishnah Yevamot 8:3). The Book of Nehemiah does not raise the question.

Ammon and Moab descended from Lot’s two sons (Genesis 19:37–38), so the charge is that kinsmen refused Israel bread and water on the road. The verse follows Deuteronomy 23:4–5 closely, down to the curse turned into a blessing, which Numbers 23 and 24 record three times over.

“Mixed multitude” is erev, the word Exodus 12:38 uses for the crowd of other peoples that left Egypt with Israel. Chapter 9’s separation (9:2) is carried out again in the light of a particular law.

“Before this” means during Nehemiah’s absence, which verse 6 explains. Whether this Eliashib is the high priest of 3:1 or a namesake in charge of the storerooms is debated. “Allied” is qarov, near, usually a relative, and Tobiah is the Ammonite of 2:10: the law just read is being broken inside the temple itself.

The storeroom held what 10:37–39 had promised: grain offerings, incense, vessels, and the tithes for Levites, singers and porters. Tobiah’s family stayed powerful for centuries; a papyrus of 259 BC mentions a Tobias ruling in Ammon, and his descendants carved the family name at their estate at Iraq al-Amir east of the Jordan.

Artaxerxes is called “king of Babylon”, one of the Persian king’s titles, as Cyrus is in Ezra 5:13. The thirty second year is about 433 BC, twelve years after Nehemiah came (5:14). “After certain days” is literally “at the end of days”, an unspecified stretch, possibly a year or more.

“Understood” is bin, the verb of 8:7–8, where the Levites caused the people to understand the law. Nehemiah stresses where the room was: in the courts of the house of God, not in some outbuilding.

“It grieved me sore” is the idiom of 2:10, where it grieved Sanballat and Tobiah “exceedingly” that a man had come to seek the welfare of Israel. Now the displeasure runs the other way, and Tobiah’s furniture goes out the door.

Nehemiah has “the chambers” cleansed, plural, not just Tobiah’s room. Hezekiah’s Levites had done the same after Ahaz, carrying the uncleanness out of the house of the LORD to the brook Kidron (2 Chronicles 29:15–16). Only then do the vessels and offerings go back.

Deuteronomy 12:19 had warned, “Take heed to thyself that thou forsake not the Levite as long as thou livest upon the earth.” The Levites had fields to go to because Numbers 35:2–5 gave them pasture lands round their towns. When the portions stopped, they farmed.

“Contended” is riv, the verb of a lawsuit, and Nehemiah contends three times in this chapter: with the rulers here, the nobles in verse 17, and the husbands in verse 25. “Set them in their place” is literally “made them stand at their station”, back on duty.

The storehouse and the tithe of corn, wine and oil are exactly the terms of Malachi 3:10, “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house”, a prophecy most date to this same period. Once there is someone to demand it, all Judah pays.

Four treasurers, one each from the priests, the scribes, the Levites and the singers, Hanan being Mattaniah’s grandson. Every group that drew from the storehouse had a man at the table. “Counted faithful” is the qualification Nehemiah gave for Hananiah in 7:2.

“Wipe not out” is machah, to blot out, the verb of Moses’ offer in Exodus 32:32, “blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book”. “Good deeds” is chasadai, my acts of loyal kindness, the word the prayer of 9:17 used for God’s “great kindness”.

Treading grapes means the scene is autumn, at the vintage, when a lost day cost the most. Jeremiah 17:21–22 had said, “bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem”, and “burdens” brought in through the gates is exactly what Nehemiah sees.

Tyre was the great Phoenician port, and its merchants were living in Jerusalem. The fish were salted or dried catch from the Mediterranean; the Fish Gate (3:3) was probably named for this trade, and excavations in the City of David have turned up bones of sea fish from this period.

“Profane” is chillel, to make common, to treat as an ordinary day. Ezekiel 20:13 and 22:8 had charged Israel with profaning God’s sabbaths. Nehemiah addresses the nobles, the customers with money, rather than the Tyrian sellers.

Jeremiah 17:27 had warned that if Jerusalem did not hallow the sabbath and kept carrying burdens through its gates, God would “kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem”. The fathers’ fire was the burned gates of 1:3. Nehemiah reads the ruin he rebuilt as the fulfilment of that word.

“Began to be dark” is tsalalu, grew shadowy, at dusk on the eve of the sabbath, which runs “from even unto even” (Leviticus 23:32). Nehemiah puts his own servants on the gates, the household men who had worked and stood guard with him (4:16, 5:16).

The traders did not give up at once; they set up outside the wall, where buyers could still slip out to them. “Once or twice” marks how quickly the governor moved against the new arrangement.

“I will lay hands on you” is literally “I will send a hand”, a threat backed by the governor’s escort of soldiers and horsemen (2:9). The market that the covenant could not stop closed within a week or two once there was force behind the closing.

Levites purified themselves to keep the city gates, as though the sabbath made the whole city holy ground like the temple courts. “Spare me” is chus, to pity; Nehemiah has moved from asking God to remember his work to asking God to spare him.

Ashdod was a Philistine city and the seat of a Persian province on Judah’s west, and the Ashdodites were among the enemies who plotted against the wall (4:7). The Ammonites and Moabites of verse 1 appear again as wives.

“The Jews’ language” is yehudit, Hebrew, the word Hezekiah’s officers used when they asked the Assyrian Rabshakeh not to speak “in the Jews’ language” in the hearing of the people on the wall (2 Kings 18:26). Children who could not follow the reading of chapter 8 would be lost to the community within a generation.

Ezra, hearing of mixed marriages, plucked out the hair of his own head and beard (Ezra 9:3). Nehemiah plucks out other men’s. The oath he makes them swear repeats the wording of the covenant in 10:30, with “or for yourselves” added.

“Beloved of his God” recalls Jedidiah, “beloved of the LORD”, the name Nathan gave Solomon at birth (2 Samuel 12:25). 1 Kings 11:1–4 records that his foreign wives turned his heart after other gods. “Outlandish” means simply foreign.

“Transgress” is ma’al, a breach of trust, taking what belongs to God and misusing it; it is the word of Ezra 10:2 and 10:10 for the same offence. The question is aimed at those defending the marriages: are we to listen to you?

Josephus (Antiquities 11.302–312) tells of Manasseh, a high priest’s brother, who married Sanballat’s daughter and went off to lead a rival temple on Mount Gerizim; most think it is a later version of this incident. “Horonite” likely means from Beth-horon. An Elephantine letter of 407 BC names Sanballat as governor of Samaria.

The covenant of the priesthood recalls the covenant of peace given to Phinehas, “the covenant of an everlasting priesthood” (Numbers 25:13), and Malachi 2:8, “ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi”. This “remember” asks God to remember against.

“Cleansed” is the verb of 12:30, where the priests purified themselves, the people and the wall. “Wards” are mishmarot, the duty rosters of priests and Levites, each set back to his own task.

The wood offering and firstfruits pledged in 10:34–35 are the last items of business. In the Hebrew canon Ezra and Nehemiah formed a single book, so “Remember me, O my God, for good” are the last words of the whole record of the return, and they repeat the prayer of 5:19.