It is the first half of verse 25 of course that so many folks – including too many Christians – would find all rather shocking and unacceptable: “And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair”. The truth is, if Nehemiah was with us today and did something like this, I suspect that most Christians would say he is unloving and unChristlike, and even seek to have him arrested!
As is often the case in this irregular series, the text under question is not so much difficult to understand as it is perplexing and puzzling to many modern readers. Because so many Christians today are far more influenced by the surrounding pagan culture than they are the truth of God’s word, a passage like this will easily bother them and upset them. Yet it is they that need to change – not the biblical text.
Let me present the wider context of the verse (Neh. 13:23-31):
In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women?”
And one of the sons of Jehoiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was the son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite. Therefore I chased him from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have desecrated the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in his work; and I provided for the wood offering at appointed times, and for the firstfruits. Remember me, O my God, for good.
It is the first half of verse 25 of course that so many folks – including too many Christians – would find all rather shocking and unacceptable: “And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair”. The truth is, if Nehemiah was with us today and did something like this, I suspect that most Christians would say he is unloving and unChristlike, and even seek to have him arrested!
They are so filled with the spirit of the age, and so steeped in fake tolerance and unbiblical notions of love, that they would be utterly appalled at this sort of behaviour. Of course these same Christians would likely also be just as appalled at the behaviour of Jesus when he deliberately formed a whip, went to the temple and started flipping tables over while berating those who were there.
In both cases lots of contemporary believers would argue that such behaviour is just not acceptable – nor Christike! But the reason for this is rather straightforward: Western Christians today have so lost sight of who God is, how holy he is, how horrible sin is, and how far we have walked away from God, that they cannot see that the things Nehemiah and Jesus did were perfectly acceptable – and fully necessary.
