The Pulpit Commentary — Nehemiah — Section 133

certain matters connected with hie province, (vers. 14, 22, 29, 31), and for the plainness or for some other reason unknown to ue. and roughness of the laJJl,(nage (sec especially During his absence various evil practices, to vers. 9, 17, 21, 25, 28). The authorship of which some reference has been already made Nehemiah is universally admitted. in connection with the renewal of the cove- Ver. 1.-0n that day. See eh. xii. 44. nant (eh. x. 30-39), acquired so much The phrase seems to mean, in Nehemiah strength, nnd came to such a head, that, on " About that time." They read in the book Nehemiah's return to Jerusalem at the of Moses. It is uncertain whether this was expiration of a year (ver. 6), he felt it a casual reading, like that of Ezra's, recorrled in eh. viii 1-8, or whether it was the pre- necessary to take active steps to put an end scribed reading (Deut. xxxi. 11) at the time to them. In the first place, intermarriages of the feast of tabernacles. Therein was between the Jews and the neighbouring found written. See Deut. xxiii. 3--5. It heathen, like those which Ezra had dis- seems to be implied that the nation at large solved twenty-five years previously (Ezra x. had no knowledge of the law, except that 16-----44), had again occurred, and a new which they derived from the occasional public reading of the Pcntateuch, or portions of it. generation was growing up which could not Copies of the law were extremely sea.roe; and speak its own language correctly (ver. 24). even if an ordinary Jew possessed one, he The family of the high priest, Eliashib, would not have been able to understand it shared in this trespass. He himself was (comp. above, eh. viii 8). allied by marriage to the Ammonite chief, Ver. 2 follows closely Deut. xxiii. 4, 5, merely substituting the third for the second Tobiah (ver. 4), and one of his grandsons person, and abbreviating a little. On the had taken to wife a daughter of Sanballat, turning of Balaam's proposed curse into a the Samaritan (ver. 28). Secondly, through blessing see Num. xxiv. 10. the growing influence of the heathen, and Ver. 3.-They separated from Israel all their intermixture with the Jews in Judrea the mixed multitude. Some lengthy process, like that pursued by Ezra (Ezra x. 10-19), and Jerusalem, the strict observance of the is probably glanced at in these words, and sab bath had fallen into disropute. Trade again in the opening words of ver. 30- was carried on upon the sabbath in Jeru- " Thus cleansed I them from all strangers." salem itself ; in the COUfltry wine-presses The rebukes of Nehemiah (vers. 25-27) did were at work, and farming operatiors con- not s,1ffice to produce a voluntary putting tinued, without the observance of any day away of the foreign wives. Judicial pro- ceedings had to be taken, and the "mi:s:ed of rest (vers. 15, 16 ). Further, the pay- multitude" separated off by authority. ment of the tithes was very irregular; and Yer. 4.-Eliashib the priest. It is ques- the Levites, who ought to have found their tioned whether the high priest of eh. iii. 1 daily food provided for them in the temple, is meant, and noted that the expression used not receiving their "portions" there, we~e - " the priest" -does not always designate "the high priest" (see ver. 13) ; but the im- forced to absent themselves from the dailt portant charge said to havo been assigned to service, and to support themselves by culti- him, the alliance with so great a man as vating their own plots of ground (vers. 10, Tobiah, and the important step taken, the 11). Finally, the temple had ceased to be assi~nment to a heathen of a residence with- regarded as sacred to the Almighty ; a por- iu the temple precincts, imply a man of high authority, and suit better with the hiqh tion of it had been converted into a dwell- priest than with any one of lower ranJL ing-house by the order of the high priest Moreovor, the fact that Eliashib's leanings himself (ver. 6), ani the Ammonite, Tobiah, were towards the en~mies of Nehemiah ac- had been allowed to take possession of it. counts for his disappearance from the history Nehemiah tells us in this chapter the mode from eh. iii. 1 to eh. xiii. 4. Having the oversight. Literally, "being set ovor "- wherein he dealt with these various evils, perhaps by Nehemiah, who seems to ham treating of the mixed marriages in vers. 1-3 claimed the appointment to all offices abont and 28-28; of the profanation of the sab- the temple which were not purely spiritt1Lil. bath in vcrs. 16-22; of the non-payment of (see eh. xii. 44 ; xiii. 13). Of the cham- the tithes in vers. 10-13; and of the de- ber. The word " chamber" (l ishkah) is hore used in a collective sense of the entire secration of the temple in vers. 4-9. The building containing the many "chamber,;·• chaptor is remarkable for the number of or "treasuries" of eh. xii. 44 ; xiii. 9, "interjectional prayers" which it contains 12, 13. Was allied unto Tobiah. Kcirub,  140 THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAH. [au. xm. 1-81.