Page 106 - Principles of Leadership - Nehemiah

calls this to our attention because the worship of Yahweh was in jeopardy. Remember, up to this time, the
scriptures were only written in Hebrew, and the worship of God was conducted in Hebrew. If the children could
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not speak this language, then the worship of Jehovah was in peril. I rebuked them, cursed them; he was not
cursing them in the sense of using foul language but was probably calling down the judgment of God upon
them because of their disobedience. He beat some of their men and pulled out their hair. In America, this
would not happen, but I have witnessed this display of shaming in African culture. One day in Mozambique, I
loaded up bicycles on the back of a truck to take out to pastors who lived in rural areas. A thief grabbed my bag
and took off running. People on the streets helped us catch the thief, and they brought him back to the truck. A
few minutes later, the police arrived on the scene. After the local pastors explained what had happened, the
police began to beat this thief on the street for all to see. This was a public shaming of the thief to try to let
others see that this behavior would not be tolerated. Nehemiah beat some of their men (probably prominent
leaders) and pulled out their hair to shame them. Again, this happens in Africa but would never happen in
America. Today, a collision of leadership cultures is happening, and you need to ask God to guide you regarding
how you should respond within the cultural setting you live in. Western superiority may not always be biblically
based, and our cry for toleration may pave the way for disobedience.

I forced them to take an oath before God and said: “You must not give your daughters in marriage to their
sons or take their daughters as wives for your sons or yourselves! The reasoning for taking a public oath is
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given in verse twenty-six. Didn’t King Solomon of Israel sin in matters like this? There was no king like him
among many nations. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel, yet foreign women
drew him into sin. Why then should we hear about you doing all this terrible evil and acting unfaithfully
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against our God by marrying foreign women?” Even one of the sons of Jehoiada, son of Eliashib the high
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priest, had become a son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite. So I drove him away from me. A third time,
Nehemiah prays Remember them, my God, for defiling the priesthood as well as the covenant of the
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priesthood and the Levites.

I will quote rather exhaustively from the NIV commentary to help further us understand how mixed marriages
were viewed in the Old Testament. “At least we create a false sense of either harmony or dichotomy; the
historical context as presented to us in the available materials suggests a both/ and rather than an either/or
when it comes to mixed marriages. The Judges' time and its recorded Deuteronomic history suggest that the
cultural fault lines did not simply line up along bloodlines but rather upon the all-important question of
allegiance to Yahwism. Thus, a Canaanite prostitute (an unclean woman, according to Levitical law) could find
herself integrated into the community, she and her household (Joshua 2;6), while a Judean could find himself
declared unclean and destroyed, he and his household (Joshua 7). The same could be said regarding Ruth, a
Transjordanian Moabite, who essentially becomes a Yahwist, which then allows her to stand in the lineage of
the Judean dynastic line of David. The Chronicler notices this undercurrent of tribal ethnic identity, which
always contains many nuances connected to Israelite identities in the earliest settlement phases; however, the
lines are drawn equally clearly regarding allegiance to Yahweh. In the case of the vast majority of Canaanites,
they did not follow Yahweh; in the case of the Moabites, 99.9 percent did not know Yahweh, as with all the
other nations around them. However, Yahweh welcomes the .1 percent who did welcome Him, regardless of
their ethnic background. Rahab, Ruth, and at a later time Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 11:11). In the corpus of
Ezra-Nehemiah, there is no discernible evidence that any of the “foreigners” (including the foreign wives) in
their midst were Yahwist. Therefore, the urgency to separate must have been even more pressing in the minds
of both Ezra and Nehemiah.” 224

Nehemiah 13:30-31 Summary and Closing Prayer
So I purified them from everything foreign and assigned specific duties to each of the priests and Levites.
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31 I also arranged for the donation of wood at the appointed times and for the first fruits. Remember me, my
God, with favor.

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