Bible Strands
Nehemiah 13:23
In those days I also saw Jews who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Nehemiah addresses the post-exilic community in Jerusalem during his second governorship, immediately following his enforcement of Sabbath observance and gate purification. He reports his direct observation of covenant violations occurring in that same period.
The words — The text highlights הֹשִׁ֗יבוּ (ho.Shi.vu), literally "they caused to sit," used here to denote taking women as wives. The particle גַּ֣ם (gam), "also," grammatically links this discovery to his prior reforms.
The thread — This pattern of intermarriage with surrounding nations appears in Ezra 9:1 and Ezra 10:10, where it is explicitly condemned as unfaithfulness. The community had previously vowed in Nehemiah 10:30 not to give their daughters to these peoples or take their daughters.
Why it lands — The verse demands a clear assessment of how covenant boundaries are maintained in daily life. It requires readers to recognize that religious identity is preserved through deliberate separation and obedience to established commands.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab:
Cross-references
- Ezra 9:1 After these things had been accomplished, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the surrounding peoples whose abominations are like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites.
- Ezra 10:10 Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have been unfaithful by marrying foreign women, adding to the guilt of Israel.
- Nehemiah 10:30 We will not give our daughters in marriage to the people of the land, and we will not take their daughters for our sons.
- Nehemiah 13:1 At that time the Book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people, and in it they found the passage stating that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God,
- 2 Corinthians 6:14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?
- Ezra 10:44 All these men had married foreign women, and some of them had children by these wives.
- 1 Samuel 5:1 After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod,
- Ezra 9:11 that You gave through Your servants the prophets, saying: ‘The land that you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the impurity of its peoples and the abominations with which they have filled it from end to end.
- Nehemiah 4:7 When Sanballat and Tobiah, together with the Arabs, Ammonites, and Ashdodites, heard that the repair to the walls of Jerusalem was progressing and that the gaps were being closed, they were furious,