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Nehemiah

About this book
Chapter 10

1 On the sealed documents were the following names: Nehemiah the governor, son of Hacaliah, along with Zedekiah, 2 Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, 3 Pashhur, Amariah, Malkijah, 4 Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch, 5 Harim, Meremoth, Obadiah, 6 Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch, 7 Meshullam, Abijah, Mijamin, 8 Maaziah, Bilgai, and Shemaiah. These were the priests. 9 The Levites were as follows: Jeshua son of Azaniah, Binnui of the sons of Henadad, Kadmiel. 10 Their colleagues were as follows: Shebaniah, Hodiah, Kelita, Pelaiah, Hanan, 11 Mica, Rehob, Hashabiah, 12 Zaccur, Sherebiah, Shebaniah, 13 Hodiah, Bani, and Beninu. 14 The leaders of the people were as follows: Parosh, Pahath Moab, Elam, Zattu, Bani, 15 Bunni, Azgad, Bebai, 16 Adonijah, Bigvai, Adin, 17 Ater, Hezekiah, Azzur, 18 Hodiah, Hashum, Bezai, 19 Hariph, Anathoth, Nebai, 20 Magpiash, Meshullam, Hezir, 21 Meshezabel, Zadok, Jaddua, 22 Pelatiah, Hanan, Anaiah, 23 Hoshea, Hananiah, Hasshub, 24 Hallohesh, Pilha, Shobek, 25 Rehum, Hashabnah, Maaseiah, 26 Ahiah, Hanan, Anan, 27 Malluch, Harim, and Baanah. 28 “Now the rest of the people—the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple attendants, and all those who have separated themselves from the neighboring peoples because of the law of God, along with their wives, their sons, and their daughters, all of whom are able to understand— 29 hereby participate with their colleagues the town leaders and enter into a curse and an oath to adhere to the law of God which was given through Moses the servant of God, and to obey carefully all the commandments of the Lord our Lord, along with his ordinances and his statutes. 30 “We will not give our daughters in marriage to the neighboring peoples, and we will not take their daughters in marriage for our sons.⁠ 31 We will not buy on the Sabbath or on a holy day from the neighboring peoples who bring their wares and all kinds of grain to sell on the Sabbath day. We will let the fields lie fallow every seventh year,⁠ and we will cancel every loan.⁠ 32 We accept responsibility for fulfilling the commands to give one-third of a shekel each year for the work of the temple of our God, 33 for the loaves of presentation and for the regular grain offerings and regular burnt offerings, for the Sabbaths, for the new moons, for the appointed meetings, for the holy offerings, for the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the temple of our God. 34 “We—the priests, the Levites, and the people—have cast lots concerning the wood offerings, to bring them to the temple of our God according to our families at the designated times year by year to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as is written in the law.⁠ 35 We also accept responsibility for bringing the firstfruits of our land and the firstfruits of every fruit tree year by year to the temple of the Lord. 36 We also accept responsibility, as is written in the law, for bringing the firstborn of our sons and our cattle and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks to the temple of our God, to the priests who are ministering in the temple of our God. 37 We will also bring the first of our coarse meal, of our contributions, of the fruit of every tree, of new wine, and of olive oil to the priests at the storerooms of the temple of our God, along with a tenth of the produce of our land to the Levites, for the Levites are the ones who collect the tithes in all the cities where we work. 38 A priest of Aaron’s line will be with the Levites when the Levites collect the tithes, and the Levites will bring up a tenth of the tithes to the temple of our God, to the storerooms of the treasury.⁠ 39 The Israelites and the Levites will bring the contribution of the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil to the storerooms where the utensils of the sanctuary are kept, and where the priests who minister stay, along with the gatekeepers and the singers. We will not neglect the temple of our God.”

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 7:3 and Nehemiah 10:30

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

In Deuteronomy, Moses warns Israel not to marry people from the surrounding nations, linking these marriages with the danger of turning to other gods. Nehemiah echoes this when the community agrees to avoid marriage with foreign women.

Passages

Deuteronomy 7:3

Hebrew Bible
1 When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you—Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you— 2 and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy! 3 You must not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will erupt against you and he will quickly destroy you. 5 Instead, this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, cut down their sacred Asherah poles, and burn up their idols.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Nehemiah 10:30

Hebrew Bible
28 “Now the rest of the people—the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple attendants, and all those who have separated themselves from the neighboring peoples because of the law of God, along with their wives, their sons, and their daughters, all of whom are able to understand— 29 hereby participate with their colleagues the town leaders and enter into a curse and an oath to adhere to the law of God which was given through Moses the servant of God, and to obey carefully all the commandments of the Lord our Lord, along with his ordinances and his statutes. 30 “We will not give our daughters in marriage to the neighboring peoples, and we will not take their daughters in marriage for our sons. 31 We will not buy on the Sabbath or on a holy day from the neighboring peoples who bring their wares and all kinds of grain to sell on the Sabbath day. We will let the fields lie fallow every seventh year, and we will cancel every loan. 32 We accept responsibility for fulfilling the commands to give one-third of a shekel each year for the work of the temple of our God,
400–301 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Nehemiah

References

"... Acting as a teacher and administrator of the Torah during the Rosh Hashanah of 458 BCE, Ezra set out to show the community who returned from exile how to put themselves apart from the impurities of the local population. According to Fishbane (1985:114) two factors played a role in the tentative evolving self-definition of this community: firstly, ritual ethos based on the Torah and secondly, ritualised ethnicity that rejected those who did not adhere to their specific praxis and modes of purity. The study of Torah depicted in Nehemiah 8 deals with the matter of ethos. Following the exegetical trend in Ezra 9:1-2 to extend the intermarriage laws of Deuteronomy 7:1-3, 6 with those of people mentioned in Deuteronomy 23:4-9, Nehemiah also made the expulsion of foreign wives and other foreign elements a priority of his procuratorship in Judaea. His concerns for proper descent indicate the concern for pure ethnicity in the third episode and the next unit (Nehemiah 10:30 and Nehemiah 13:23-27). The measures first taken in Ezra’s time to make a covenant with God to send away all the foreign wives and their children according to the law (Ezra 10:3) were repeated in Nehemiah’s time. He continued Ezra’s former exegetical practice of citing (Deuteronomy 7:1-3 and 23:4-9) and alluding (Leviticus 18) to existing scripture to exclude Ashdodite, Ammonite and Moabite women from the post-exilic community, prohibiting Judaean men to marry them (Nehemiah 10:30). His formulation of forbidding intermarriage with these women recalls the language used in the Deuteronomic Law (Deuteronomy 7:3) and the Deuteronomistic historiography (Joshua 23:12). Explicating the reference to the daughters of the land (Nehemiah 10:30) to indicate the women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab in Nehemiah 13:23-24, Nehemiah deliberately refers to Solomon as one who sinned before the Lord by marrying foreign women (Nehemiah 13:26) ..."
Pieter M. Venter, “Canon, Intertextuality and History in Nehemiah 7:72b–10:40,” HvTSt 65.1 (2009): 1–8.

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Deuteronomy 7:3 and Nehemiah 10:30

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