Covenantal Contamination and the Cure Text: Nehemiah 13:23-31
Introduction: The High Cost of Low Standards
We come now to the end of Nehemiah's account, and we find it is not a quiet retirement. Reformation is not a one-time event; it is a constant, dogged, and often messy business. A garden that is gloriously weeded in the spring will be a riot of thorns by late summer if left untended. And so it is with the covenant people. Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem after some time away in the court of Artaxerxes and finds the garden choked with weeds. The gates are not being kept, the Levites are not being supplied, and the Sabbath is being profaned. But the weed that has the deepest root, the one that threatens the very genetic identity of God's people, is the weed of foreign intermarriage.
Our modern, sentimental age recoils at this. We have been trained by our culture to see this as nothing more than xenophobia or racism. But this is to be biblically illiterate. The issue for Nehemiah, and for all of Scripture, is never about ethnicity or skin color. It is about covenant fidelity. It is about spiritual purity. Rahab the Canaanite and Ruth the Moabitess were grafted into the people of God because they embraced the God of the people. The prohibition was never against foreigners as such, but against foreign gods. To marry a pagan was to marry his or her gods. It was to set up an altar to Chemosh in the living room. It was to invite the Trojan horse of idolatry inside the gates that Nehemiah had just so painstakingly rebuilt.
The world always wants to compromise. It wants to blend, to syncretize, to blur the edges. The world says, "Can't we all just get along?" And the faithful reformer, like Nehemiah, must thunder, "No, not when getting along means going to Hell together." The holiness of God requires distinction. The covenant requires separation. God is in the business of sorting things out, light from darkness, clean from unclean, the holy from the profane. And when His people begin to deliberately smudge those lines, a godly leader must not form a committee to study the problem. He must get his hands dirty. He must, as we see here, contend, curse, strike, and pull out hair. This is not the action of a petty tyrant. This is the zeal of a spiritual father throwing over the tables of the money-changers who are defiling his Father's house.
This passage is a stark reminder that covenantal identity is not maintained by accident. It is preserved through vigilance, through discipline, and through a fierce, loving, and sometimes violent intolerance of that which threatens to pollute the people of God. What we tolerate, we will eventually celebrate. Nehemiah understood this, and so must we.
The Text
In those days I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah, but only the tongue of his own people. So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair and made them swear by God, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take up their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was loved by his God, and God gave him to be king over all Israel; nevertheless the foreign women caused even him to sin. Do we then hear about you that you have done all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?” And even one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite, so I made him flee away from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign and ensured that the responsibilities stood for the priests and the Levites, each in his work, and I arranged for the supply of wood at fixed times and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good.
(Nehemiah 13:23-31 LSB)
The Cultural Fruit of Compromise (v. 23-24)
Nehemiah begins by observing the visible, cultural consequences of disobedience.
"In those days I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah, but only the tongue of his own people." (Nehemiah 13:23-24 LSB)
The sin is plain: they had married women from the surrounding pagan nations. This was a direct violation of the law given in Deuteronomy 7 and a breach of the specific oath they had sworn just a few chapters earlier (Nehemiah 10:30). This is not simple backsliding; this is high-handed, covenant-breaking rebellion. They knew better. They had sworn not to do this very thing.
But notice the evidence Nehemiah presents. It is not first and foremost theological, though that is the root. It is cultural. The children are the evidence. "Half spoke in the language of Ashdod." They couldn't speak the language of Judah. Why does this matter? Is this just a sentimental attachment to a mother tongue? Not at all. The language of Judah, Hebrew, was the language of the covenant. It was the language of the Torah, the Psalms, the Prophets. To be unable to speak Hebrew was to be cut off from the Word of God in its original form. It was to be biblically illiterate from the cradle.
The pagan mothers were raising pagan children. The faith was not being passed down because the very medium of that faith, the language of Scripture, was being lost. Culture is never neutral. It is always the expression of a religion, a cult. These families were not creating a happy, multicultural synthesis. They were creating a pagan monoculture. The language of Ashdod was displacing the language of Zion. This is how a covenant people dies. Not with a bang of apostasy, but with the whimper of a child who cannot read the Scriptures, who cannot sing the Psalms, who cannot understand the promises of God because he only knows the language of the world.
This is a profound lesson for us. When Christian parents abdicate the discipleship of their children to the state, to Hollywood, to the internet, they should not be surprised when their children speak the language of Ashdod. When we immerse our children in a culture that is hostile to God, they will learn its grammar, its vocabulary, and its worldview. Covenantal education is not an optional extra for the super-spiritual; it is a matter of life and death for the next generation.
The Zealous Response of a Godly Ruler (v. 25-27)
Nehemiah's reaction is swift, severe, and to our soft generation, shocking.
"So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair and made them swear by God, 'You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take up their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.'" (Nehemiah 13:25 LSB)
Nehemiah does four things. First, he contended with them. He argued, he reasoned, he rebuked. He laid out the case for their sin. Second, he cursed them. This was not a fit of temper. This was a formal pronouncement of the covenant curses found in Deuteronomy 28. He was calling down upon them the very sanctions that God had promised for this kind of disobedience. He was saying, "You have placed yourselves under God's judgment, and I am here as His governor to tell you so."
Third, he struck some of them and pulled out their hair. This was a form of public shaming and corporal punishment. It was a visible, tangible expression of the ugliness of their sin. It was meant to humiliate them, to show them that their rebellion against a holy God was a shameful and disgusting thing. We want our discipline to be neat, tidy, and private. But some sins are so public and so defiant that the discipline must be equally public and sharp. This was not brutality; it was spiritual surgery without anesthetic, designed to save the patient.
Fourth, he made them swear an oath. He brought them back to the point of covenant renewal. He did not just punish the sin; he took steps to prevent its recurrence. He bound their consciences before God once more. This is the goal of all true discipline: repentance and restoration to faithfulness.
And what is his central argument? He points them to the wisest man who ever lived, who was undone by this very sin.
"Did not Solomon king of Israel sin regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was loved by his God, and God gave him to be king over all Israel; nevertheless the foreign women caused even him to sin. Do we then hear about you that you have done all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?" (Nehemiah 13:26-27 LSB)
The argument is devastating. If Solomon, with all his wisdom, all his wealth, and all his direct blessing from God, could be dragged into the gutter of idolatry by this sin, what makes you think you are immune? If the strongest tree in the forest was felled by this axe, what hope does a sapling like you have? This is a frontal assault on their pride. We are always tempted to think we can handle the temptation, that we can flirt with the world and not get burned. Nehemiah says that is the height of folly. History is littered with the spiritual corpses of men who thought they were stronger than Solomon. The command to be separate is not a suggestion; it is a guardrail on the edge of a cliff.
Corruption at the Top (v. 28-29)
The corruption was not limited to the common people. It had reached the highest levels of spiritual leadership.
"And even one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite, so I made him flee away from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites." (Nehemiah 13:28-29 LSB)
This is the rotten core of the problem. A grandson of the high priest had married the daughter of Sanballat the Horonite. Sanballat was not just some generic pagan; he was the chief adversary of the work of God in Jerusalem. He was enemy number one. This was not just a compromise; this was treason. This was the son of the Secretary of Defense marrying the daughter of the head of Al-Qaeda. It was a political alliance designed to undermine everything Nehemiah had built.
The priesthood was defiled. The covenant of Levi, which was a covenant of holiness and separation, was polluted at its very source. When the leadership compromises, the rot spreads downward with terrifying speed. A fish rots from the head down. Nehemiah's response is decisive: "I made him flee away from me." He chased him out. He excommunicated him. There was no room for this kind of fifth-column treachery in the house of God. The purity of the priesthood was more important than the pedigree of the priest.
Nehemiah then turns to God in prayer: "Remember them, O my God." This is an imprecatory prayer. He is asking God to bring judgment upon those who have defiled His holy things. This is not personal vindictiveness. It is a righteous zeal for the honor of God's name and the purity of His worship. When we see the church defiled by corrupt leadership, our response should be the same: decisive action and fervent prayer for God to vindicate His own name.
Cleansing and Reordering (v. 30-31)
The book concludes with a summary of Nehemiah's reforming work and a final, personal plea to God.
"Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign and ensured that the responsibilities stood for the priests and the Levites, each in his work, and I arranged for the supply of wood at fixed times and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good." (Nehemiah 13:30-31 LSB)
Nehemiah's work was twofold. First, there was a negative work: "I cleansed them from everything foreign." This was a work of purification, of purging, of separation. He removed the pagan influences that were corrupting the people. Sanctification always involves this kind of radical amputation. We are called to cleanse ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit (2 Corinthians 7:1).
But reformation is not just about stopping bad things. It is about starting good things. So, second, there was a positive work of reordering. He re-established the duties of the priests and Levites. He ensured that the practical mechanisms of worship, the supply of wood for the altar and the collection of the first fruits, were put back in place. True reformation is liturgical. It restores right worship. It is not enough to be against idolatry; we must be for the true and orderly worship of the living God.
The book ends with Nehemiah's characteristic prayer: "Remember me, O my God, for good." This is not the plea of a man trusting in his own works for salvation. It is the cry of a faithful servant who has spent his life for the glory of his King and who confidently entrusts his efforts, his legacy, and his soul into the hands of a gracious and covenant-keeping God. He knows that his only hope is that God, for Christ's sake, will look upon his labors and remember them for good.
Conclusion: The Greater Nehemiah
Nehemiah is a magnificent picture of godly leadership and zealous reformation. He cleansed the people, drove out the enemy, and restored true worship. But he is only a shadow. His work, as necessary as it was, could not ultimately cleanse the human heart. The people he reformed would sin again. The oaths they swore would be broken again.
We need a greater Nehemiah. And we have one in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate reformer, the one who does not just drive out the enemy but crushes his head. He does not just cleanse the community from outward defilement, but He cleanses His people from all their sin with His own blood. He does not just pull out the hair of a few offenders; He went to the cross to deal with the root of all rebellion.
Like Nehemiah, Jesus found the house of God defiled, a den of robbers, and He cleansed it. Like Nehemiah, He confronted corrupt leadership. But His cleansing is permanent and perfect. He has not just chased out a compromised priest; He has established a perfect and eternal priesthood in Himself. He has not just dealt with unequally yoked marriages; He has rescued His Bride, the Church, from her adulterous affair with the world and is making her pure and spotless for the wedding day.
The zeal of Nehemiah was a righteous zeal for the house of God. But it was just a foretaste of the zeal of Christ, of whom it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." That zeal drove Him to the cross, where He took all the covenant curses that Nehemiah pronounced, so that we might receive all the covenant blessings. Our task, as the people of this greater Nehemiah, is to maintain the purity He has purchased for us. We are to "cleanse ourselves from everything foreign," to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14), and to present our bodies as living sacrifices in the true and orderly worship of our God. And we do so with the confident prayer that He who began this good work in us will remember us for good and bring it to completion on the day of His return.