Nehemiah 13

“Law of Moses” can refer to the collection of five Bible books attributed to Moses, the first five in the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Or it can refer to any part of that collection known as the Pentateuch. Often, Bible writers talking about the Law are referring to sections in Deuteronomy, a collection of speeches Moses made to the Israelites shortly before he died. He went over the most important laws with this new generation of Israelites, to make sure they understood their part of the agreement they had with God. Deuteronomy is a concise summary of the laws Moses said God gave him.

“Join the people of God” is often translated something like this: “enter the assembly of God.” It’s unclear what that means. It could mean foreigners weren’t allowed to worship with Jews at the Temple. Or it might mean they can’t convert to the Jewish faith. Or it could mean Jews should stay away from them. Whatever it means, the reader was apparently quoting Deuteronomy 23:3-6. But the ban on whatever Moses had in mind—worship with Jews, converting, marrying Jews—it wasn’t literally a ban forever: “Citizens of Ammon and Moab aren’t allowed … for 10 generations.” Ten generations was a stretch of time already long gone by Nehemiah’s day. Apparently, Jews in Nehemiah’s time considered “10 generations” a polite way of saying “never again.” One more note: a woman from Moab gave birth to a son named Obed who became the grandpa of King David (Ruth 3:21-22). That made King David one-eighth (12.5 percent) Moabite. In body parts, that’s equal to a little off the top and bottom: 1 head, 2 feet.

Balaam’s name showed up on an ancient inscription found in what is now Jordan’s city of Deir Alla. The inscription is a fragment of a collection of visions by “a divine seer” called “Balaam, son of Beor”—just as the Bible writers identified him. The Deir Alla Inscription said, “the gods came to him at night.” The inscription, painted in ink on a plastered wall, dates to roughly 800 BC, several centuries after Balaam and Moses.

It’s unclear if the Jews simply asked the outsiders to leave the event. In Ezra 10:3-44, they took it much further. Jewish men who married foreign women divorced them and sent them away, with their half-foreign children.

It’s unclear if this was “the” Eliashib—the man identified elsewhere as the high priest (3:1; 12:10). Here, he is simply the “priest.”

Is this “Tobiah the Ammonite” (2:10), who tried to stop the Jews from repairing Jerusalem’s city walls? He and the Samaritan, Sanballat, had family connections to the Jews (6:19). Given Nehemiah’s reaction to what happens, yes this appears to be “the” Tobiah, from Ammon. The writer doesn’t say how the two men were related.

Frankincense was one of the most exotic and expensive fragrances available, along with myrrh. Both come from sap of small trees and shrubs growing in what are now Saudi Arabia, northern Africa, and India. People would grind up the dried sap and put it in perfumes. They also burned it as a woody fragrance, and a sweet-smelling incense. They burned the incense in religious services. They also burned incense in homes as air fresheners in the days before soap and deodorants.

Numbers 18:8-32; Deuteronomy 14:27.

Year of reign number 32 for the Persian king translates to about 433 BC on our calendars.

A scribe was someone who could read and write. People would hire them to read and write letters, contracts, inventory lists. Scribes in New Testament times were a different breed. Those scribes specialized in the Jewish laws. Each of the major groups of Jews had their own scribes. These included the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. But in the time of Jesus, most scribes were Pharisees. This was the branch of the Jewish faith well-known for its meticulous devotion to observing the Law as they interpreted it and for insisting that everyone else do the same. In the Gospel of Mark, scribes represent the moral opposite of Jesus.

See Exodus 20:8-11; 35:2-3.

The words “cussing” and “cursing” come from just one Hebrew word that can mean a lot of different things: qalal. It can mean calling down a curse from God by wishing bad things to happen to someone. People in Bible times seemed to teach that those words of cursing or of blessing had the power to make things happen. But in this context of a man losing his temper badly enough to hit people and pull out their hair, when we read the Hebrew word that says he also qalal, cursed, memories of choice words spoken in a hot-headed blowup may come to mind. May God forgive.

Probably not a cat fight, but a way of disgracing someone and showing how despicable you think they are. It would be embarrassing to get publicly slapped around by the alpha male when you know you can’t return the disfavor.

See 1 Kings 11. Solomon sacrificed to idols, breaking the first of the 10 Commandments.

Literally, “Sanballat the Horonite.” An ancient document from the city of Elephantine in Egypt mentions Sanballat the Horonite as governor of Samaria, just north of Judah. The document puts Sanballat in that job as an old man with his sons helping him in about 408 BC. So, he may not have been governor almost 40 years earlier. “Horonite” takes some guessing. One of the most common is that Sanballat lived in the town of Beth-Horon, near Jerusalem, on an important road to the Mediterranean coast.