Nehemiah 10:28-31

2. The content of the document is a vow of purity from the heathen.

TEXT, Nehemiah 10:28-31

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Now the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons and their daughters, all those who had knowledge and understanding.

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are joining with their kinsmen, their nobles, and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, which was given through Moses, God's servant, and to keep and to observe all the commandments of GOD our LORD, and His ordinances and His statutes:

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and that we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.

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As for the peoples of the land who bring wares or any grain on the sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the sabbath or a holy day; and we will forego the crops the seventh year and the exaction of every debt.

COMMENT

Nehemiah 10:28 takes note of the categories of persons who did not sign, but (see Nehemiah 10:29) were represented by those who did. The all those who had separated themselves we would understand to be a comprehensive term for the individual groups previously mentioned. Note that men and women, young and old (reasonably young: having knowledge and understanding; it takes a little longer to acquire understanding than it does knowledge), were included. This was exceptional; note its parallel in Nehemiah 8:2.

Nehemiah 10:29 shows their solidarity with the kinsmen and nobles whose signatures presumably are above. The curse and oath express the solemnity of the occasion, and their awareness of its possible consequences. Next we have the vow's contents. Point number one is their obligation to God's Word: that must always be kept foremost. We have noticed before (Nehemiah 8:1) their certainty that this was God's law which came through Moses.

There are actually three kinds of material in the full agreement. (1) Reference was made to particular laws handed down from Moses, called to their attention because these were the ones they were neglecting. They were not innovators; they were seeking to live by the ancient traditions. (2) Detail was added to spell out the methods by which these laws would be put into operation: a priest was to be present when the Levites received tithes for example. (3) They were accepting new obligations (gathering firewood for example) in order to share with one another more equitably, probably because the proportion of their population who were priests or Levites was higher than ever before, and they did not want to neglect the support of these people. This was a personal agreement, with personal names attached, and this was their personal pledge. If it were not for this, they could simply have vowed to keep the Law in general.

Nehemiah 10:30 deals again with the nagging problem of intermarriage which always threatened to wipe out the distinctive character of their religion and even their national identity. It will be mentioned yet again.

Nehemiah 10:31 enforces the strictness of their observance of the Sabbath day and holy days; they would not buy or sell with foreigners; of course it goes without saying that there would be no commercial dealings with each other on those days. The Sabbatical year would be observed with equal strictness; two of its features were that crops were not to be planted (the land was to be given a rest; there are certain ecological considerations which a man owes to the soil, as well as concerns for the poor: Leviticus 25:3 f; Exodus 23:10 f), and no one was to be pressured for payment on his debts.

WORD STUDIES

DOCUMENT: see AMEN, in the Word Studies for chapter 8. SABBATH (Nehemiah 10:31): the basic idea is to cease, interrupt, stop; thus the manna ceased (the verb form of this word): Joshua 5:12. If work stops, there is rest (Exodus 23:12).

The word applied to the seventh day (Exodus 20:11); to the seventh years, when no crops were to be sown (Leviticus 25:2); to the first and last day of the festivals that lasted for a week, regardless of the day of the week (Leviticus 23:39); to the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:32) or Feast of Trumpets (Leviticus 23:24); or in the plural as a synonym for weeks (Leviticus 23:15) or for seven-year periods (Leviticus 25:8).