Nehemiah 13:23–30

Nehemiah Dissolves Marriages to Foreigners

²³In those days I saw some Jews who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. ²⁴Half their children spoke the language of Ashdod or one of the other languages, but they couldn’t understand the language of Judah well enough to speak it. ²⁵So I reprimanded those Jews, cursed them, beat some of them, and pulled out their hair. I made them swear by God: “We won’t allow our daughters to marry their sons, and we won’t allow their daughters to marry us or our sons.” ²⁶I said, “Wasn’t it because of marriages like these that King Solomon of Israel sinned? There wasn’t a king like him among all nations. God loved him, and God made him king of all Israel. But his non-Israelite wives led him to sin. ²⁷Should we follow your example, commit such a serious crime against our God, and be unfaithful to him by marrying non-Israelite women?” 

²⁸Even one of Joiada’s sons was a son-in-law of Sanballat from Beth Horon. (Joiada was the son of the chief priest Eliashib.) I chased Joiada’s son away from me. 

²⁹⸤Nehemiah prayed,⸥ “Remember them, my God, because they have contaminated the priestly office and the promise^ayou made to the priests and Levites.” 

³⁰So I cleansed them from everything that was foreign. I assigned duties to the priests and Levites. Each one had his own assignment.