Nehemiah 13: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem after time away with the king and finds several agreements broken. He throws Tobiah's belongings out of a temple storeroom, restores the shares owed to the Levites and singers so they return to their work, shuts the city gates to stop Sabbath trading, and confronts men who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. Throughout the chapter he asks God to remember what he has done. This closes the book of Nehemiah with an account of the reforms he enforced on his second stay.

Claim by Claim

1. 13:1
   • On that day the book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people.
   • It was found written in the book that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God.
2. 13:2
   • The reason given is that the Ammonites and Moabites did not meet the children of Israel with bread and water.
   • They hired Balaam against Israel to curse them.
   • Our God turned the curse into a blessing.
3. 13:3
   • When the people heard the law, they separated all those of mixed foreign descent from Israel.
4. 13:4
   • Before this, Eliashib the priest had been put in charge of the storerooms of the house of our God.
   • Eliashib was closely connected to Tobiah.
5. 13:5
   • Eliashib had made a large room for Tobiah.
   • In that room they had previously stored the grain offering, the frankincense, and the vessels.
   • In that room they had previously stored the tithes of grain, new wine, and oil.
   • Those tithes were the portion commanded for the Levites, the singers, and the gatekeepers.
   • In that room they had previously stored the contributions for the priests.
6. 13:6
   • During all this Nehemiah was not in Jerusalem.
   • In the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon Nehemiah went to the king.
   • After some time Nehemiah asked leave of the king.
7. 13:7
   • Nehemiah came to Jerusalem.
   • Nehemiah learned of the evil Eliashib had done for Tobiah.
   • The evil was that Eliashib made a room for Tobiah in the courts of the house of God.
8. 13:8
   • It grieved Nehemiah greatly.
   • Nehemiah threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room.
9. 13:9
   • Nehemiah gave a command and the rooms were cleansed.
   • Nehemiah brought back to the rooms the vessels of the house of God, along with the grain offering and the frankincense.
10. 13:10
    • Nehemiah learned that the portions of the Levites had not been given to them.
    • The Levites and the singers who did the work had each fled to his own field.
11. 13:11
    • Nehemiah contended with the officials.
    • Nehemiah asked why the house of God was forsaken.
    • Nehemiah gathered them together.
    • Nehemiah set them in their places.
12. 13:12
    • All Judah brought the tithe of grain, new wine, and oil into the storehouses.
13. 13:13
    • Nehemiah appointed as treasurers over the storehouses Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, and Pedaiah of the Levites.
    • Next to them was Hanan son of Zaccur, son of Mattaniah.
    • They were considered trustworthy.
    • Their duty was to distribute to their brethren.
14. 13:14
    • Nehemiah asked God to remember him concerning this.
    • Nehemiah asked God not to wipe out the acts of loyal devotion he had done for the house of his God and for its services.
15. 13:15
    • In those days Nehemiah saw people in Judah treading winepresses on the sabbath.
    • He saw them bringing in heaps of grain.
    • He saw them loading donkeys.
    • He saw wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads.
    • They brought these into Jerusalem on the sabbath day.
    • Nehemiah warned them on the day they sold food.
16. 13:16
    • Men of Tyre lived in the city.
    • They brought in fish and all kinds of merchandise.
    • They sold on the sabbath to the people of Judah and in Jerusalem.
17. 13:17
    • Nehemiah contended with the nobles of Judah.
    • Nehemiah asked them what this evil thing was that they were doing.
    • Nehemiah said they were profaning the sabbath day.
18. 13:18
    • Nehemiah asked whether their fathers had not done the same thing.
    • Nehemiah said God brought all this evil upon us and upon this city.
    • Nehemiah said they were adding more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath.
19. 13:19
    • When the gates of Jerusalem grew dark before the sabbath, Nehemiah gave a command and the doors were shut.
    • Nehemiah ordered that the doors not be opened until after the sabbath.
    • Nehemiah stationed some of his servants at the gates.
    • The purpose was that no load should come in on the sabbath day.
20. 13:20
    • The merchants and sellers of all kinds of goods lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice.
21. 13:21
    • Nehemiah warned them.
    • Nehemiah asked why they were lodging in front of the wall.
    • Nehemiah said that if they did it again he would lay hands on them.
    • From that time on they did not come on the sabbath.
22. 13:22
    • Nehemiah told the Levites to purify themselves.
    • Nehemiah told the Levites to come and guard the gates.
    • The purpose was to keep the sabbath day holy.
    • Nehemiah asked God to remember him concerning this also.
    • Nehemiah asked God to spare him according to the abundance of his loyal love.
23. 13:23
    • In those days Nehemiah also saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab.
24. 13:24
    • Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod.
    • They could not speak the language of Judah.
    • They spoke according to the language of each people.
25. 13:25
    • Nehemiah contended with them.
    • Nehemiah cursed them.
    • Nehemiah struck some of the men.
    • Nehemiah pulled out their hair.
    • Nehemiah made them swear by God.
    • Nehemiah charged them not to give their daughters to the sons of the foreigners.
    • Nehemiah charged them not to take the daughters of the foreigners for their sons or for themselves.
26. 13:26
    • Nehemiah asked whether Solomon king of Israel did not sin by these things.
    • Among many nations there was no king like Solomon.
    • Solomon was loved by his God.
    • God made Solomon king over all Israel.
    • Foreign women caused even Solomon to sin.
27. 13:27
    • Nehemiah asked whether they should listen to them and do all this great evil.
    • He described it as acting unfaithfully against our God.
    • He described it as marrying foreign women.
28. 13:28
    • One of the sons of Joiada son of Eliashib the high priest was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite.
    • Nehemiah drove him away from himself.
29. 13:29
    • Nehemiah asked God to remember them.
    • The reason is that they defiled the priesthood.
    • The reason is that they defiled the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites.
30. 13:30
    • Nehemiah cleansed them from everything foreign.
    • Nehemiah appointed duties for the priests and the Levites, each man in his work.
31. 13:31
    • Nehemiah made provision for the wood offering at appointed times.
    • Nehemiah made provision for the firstfruits.
    • Nehemiah asked God to remember him for good.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

13:1

The "Book of Moses" is the first five books of the Bible, read aloud because copies were rare and most people could not read. The passage found is Deuteronomy 23:3–6. The "assembly" is the gathered community of Israel, its worship and its public life, so being barred from it meant being excluded from full membership among the people. Ammon and Moab were small kingdoms east of the Dead Sea, long-standing neighbors and rivals of Israel.

13:2

The story is in Numbers 22–24. Balaam was a professional diviner hired by the king of Moab to pronounce a curse on Israel as it traveled toward Canaan; in the account the words that came out of his mouth were blessings instead. Refusing travelers food and water was a serious breach of the hospitality expected in that world.

13:3

The King James "mixed multitude" translates a Hebrew word for people of mixed or foreign ancestry. What exactly the separation involved (exclusion from worship, from the assembly, or from the community altogether) is not spelled out.

13:4

Tobiah is the Ammonite official who, with Sanballat, had opposed Nehemiah's rebuilding of the city wall earlier in the book. The Hebrew behind "closely connected" (King James "allied unto") means related or attached to; it most likely refers to a family tie by marriage, but the word is vague. The storerooms were chambers built around the temple courtyards where the goods brought in by the people were kept.

13:5

Grain offerings were gifts of flour, oil and grain presented at the temple. Frankincense is a fragrant resin burned as incense. The "tenth part" is the tithe, a tenth of each harvest, which the people owed as support for the temple staff. Levites were members of the tribe of Levi who did the temple's practical and musical work but were not priests; the singers and gatekeepers were Levite guilds responsible for music and for guarding the entrances. All of them lived off these deliveries, since the tribe of Levi held no farmland of its own.

13:6

Artaxerxes I ruled the Persian empire; Persian kings also held the title "king of Babylon" after conquering that city, which is why the King James uses it here. His thirty-second year was about 433 BC. Nehemiah was the king's cupbearer and served at court, so returning meant reporting back to his post; he then had to request royal permission before he could travel to Jerusalem again.

13:7

The courts were the open yards around the temple. Only certain people were allowed there, so giving a foreigner a room inside was shocking.

13:8

Throwing a man's furniture into the street was a public act of eviction, not private temper. Tobiah was not a priest and was an Ammonite, so his living quarters inside the temple precinct made the room unusable for its sacred purpose.

13:9

Purifying meant a ceremony of washing and ritual cleansing that restored a space to fitness for sacred use. It says nothing about physical dirt.

13:10

The Levites had no tribal territory to farm for a living; their income was the tithe. When the deliveries stopped, they had to fall back on the plots of land attached to the towns where they lived, which meant abandoning the temple duties.

13:11

The King James "contended with" means confronted or argued with in a formal, public way, closer to bringing a charge than to bickering.

13:12

A tenth part is called a tithe. Farmers set aside one basket out of every ten for God's house and its workers.

13:13

A scribe was a trained professional official (literate, and employed to keep records and draft documents), not simply a copyist.

13:14

"Remember me" is a form of prayer that recurs through this chapter (verses 14, 22, 29, 31). The image behind "wipe out" is a written record: Nehemiah asks that the entry not be erased from the ledger.

13:15

The Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, on which all work was to stop. A winepress was a hollowed rock basin where grapes were trodden by foot, the juice running into a lower basin. Sheaves are bundles of cut grain stalks tied together at harvest. Everything Nehemiah lists is ordinary harvest and market labor, which is the point.

13:16

Tyre was a wealthy Phoenician port on the coast north of Israel, whose merchants traded across the Mediterranean. Fish would have been brought inland salted or dried.

13:17

To "profane" something is to treat what has been set apart as sacred as though it were ordinary. Nehemiah goes after the nobles rather than the traders because the leading men were the ones with the authority to permit or stop the markets.

13:18

The "trouble" is the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem roughly a century and a half earlier, when the city walls and temple were destroyed and much of the population deported. Nehemiah's hearers were the descendants of those who had returned.

13:19

The day was reckoned from sunset to sunset, so the Sabbath began on what we would call Friday evening. Shutting the gates at dusk sealed the city for the whole of the following day.

13:20

The King James "lodged without" means camped outside the wall for the night. The traders hoped people would come out to them since they could not get in.

13:21

"Lay hands on you" means seize you by force. As governor, Nehemiah had the authority to arrest and punish.

13:22

Guarding the gates was normally the job of ordinary watchmen. Assigning Levites (who had to ritually purify themselves first) treated the city gates on that day as an extension of temple duty.

13:23

Ashdod was a coastal city on the old Philistine plain, by this time part of a neighboring Persian province. Ammon and Moab were the kingdoms east of the Dead Sea named in verse 1.

13:24

The "language of Judah" is Hebrew. The Hebrew of this verse is compressed and can be read either as "half of the children spoke Ashdodite" or as "the children spoke half in Ashdodite": that is, a mixed speech. Either way the concern is that a generation was growing up unable to understand the texts read publicly in verse 1.

13:25

Cursing here means pronouncing a formal, legally weighty curse aloud, not swearing at someone. Tearing out a man's hair or beard was a recognized public humiliation in that world, and beating was a magistrate's punishment; Nehemiah is acting as governor. The oath he imposes bans marriage in both directions, and "or for yourselves" adds the men he is addressing, not just their sons.

13:26

The account is in 1 Kings 11. Solomon's foreign wives are said to have brought their own gods with them, and shrines for those gods were built in Jerusalem. The King James "outlandish" simply meant foreign in 1611; it did not mean bizarre.

13:27

In the King James, "strange" means foreign or belonging to another people, not odd. "Hearken" means listen and agree.

13:28

Sanballat was the governor of Samaria, the province to the north, and Nehemiah's chief political opponent throughout the book. "Horonite" identifies his home town, either Beth-horon nearby or Horonaim in Moab. The man driven out was a grandson of the high priest, so a priest himself, married into the family of Nehemiah's rival.

13:29

The "covenant" is the standing agreement that set the priests and Levites apart for their office, which included restrictions on whom a priest might marry (Leviticus 21). To defile it is to break those terms.

13:30

The King James "wards" means assigned posts or watches, the specific duty each man was rostered to perform.

13:31

The wood offering was a rota of deliveries of firewood, since the altar fire burned continuously and Judah had little timber to spare. Firstfruits were the earliest part of each harvest, brought to the temple before the rest of the crop was used.