Study Desk

In those days I also saw that the Jews had ^(F1)(C1)married women from ^(C2)Ashdod, ^(C3)Ammon, and Moab.

As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them knew how to speak the language of Judah, but ^(F1)only the language of his own people.

So ^(C1)I quarreled with them and cursed them, and ^(C2)struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and ^(C3)made them swear by God, "You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take any of their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.

"^(C1)Did Solomon the king of Israel not sin regarding these things? ^(C2)Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and ^(C3)he was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel; yet the foreign women caused even him to sin.

"Has it not then been reported about you that you have committed all this great evil ^(C1)by acting unfaithfully against our God, by ^(F1)marrying foreign women?"

Even one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, became a son-in-law of ^(C1)Sanballat the Horonite, so I chased him away from me.

^(C1)Remember them, my God, ^(F1)because they have defiled the priesthood and the ^(C2)covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.

^(C1)So I purified them from everything foreign, and assigned duties to the priests and the Levites, each in his work,