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I finished reading through Nehemiah. It was an interesting book.

This part from the last chapter was surprising to me:

23 Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. 24 Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. 25 I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair. I made them take an oath in God’s name and said: “You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves. (NIV)

Matthew Henry’s Commentary explained, “Nehemiah showed the evil of these marriages. Some, more obstinate than the rest, he smote, that is, ordered them to be beaten by the officers according to the law, De 25:2, 3.”

So Nehemiah wasn’t sinning when he punished these men, he was obeying the law. (Any more commentary on these verses is welcome.)

Before this incident, Nehemiah did some other things in the chapter to obey God: he kicked Tobiah, an Ammonite official who opposed Nehemiah’s effort to build the wall around Jerusalem (4:7, 6:19), out of a room in the temple (13:8); he “rebuked the officials” for neglecting to pay the Levites and the singers; he “rebuked the nobles of Judah” for working on the Sabbath, and even went so far as to shut up the gates of Jerusalem “so that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day.”

I was thinking about some application from this chapter. Now Christians are not under the rules of the law, but we are commanded to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3:16 (NIV)) We are to admonish or warn each other when we detect sin. But we are also to obey Paul’s advice to Timothy: “And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” (II Timothy 2:24-26)

These are some of my thoughts that I had while reading Nehemiah. Any comments are welcome.