13:1-9 Israel was a peculiar people, and not to mingle with the nations. See the benefit of publicly reading the word of God; when it is duly attended to, it discovers to us sin and duty, good and evil, and shows wherein we have erred. We profit, when we are thus wrought upon to separate from evil. Those that would drive sin out of their hearts, the living temples, must throw out its household stuff, and all the provision made for it; and take away all the things that are the food and fuel of lust; this is really to mortify it. When sin is cast out of the heart by repentance, let the blood of Christ be applied to it by faith, then let it be furnished with the graces of God's Spirit, for every good work.

Verse 4. - Eliashib the priest. It is questioned whether the high priest of Nehemiah 3:1 is meant, and noted that the expression used - "the priest"- does not always designate "the high priest" (see ver. 13); but the important charge said to have been assigned to him, the alliance with so great a man as Tobiah, and the important step taken, the assignment to a heathen of a residence within the temple precincts, imply a man of high authority, and suit better with the high priest than with any one of lower rank. Moreover, the fact that Eliashib's leanings were towards the enemies of Nehemiah accounts for his disappearance from the history from Nehemiah 3:1 to Nehemiah 13:4. Having the oversight. Literally, "being set over" - perhaps by Nehemiah, who seems to have claimed the appointment to all offices about the temple which were not purely spiritual. (see Nehemiah 12:44; Nehemiah 13:13). Of the chamber. The word "chamber" (lishkah) is here used in a collective sense of the entire building containing the many "chambers" or "treasuries" of Nehemiah 12:44; Nehemiah 13:9, 12, 13. Was allied unto Tobiah. Karob, the word translated "allied," means "a relation," either by blood or marriage. In the present case the relationship must have been by means of a marriage.

And before this,.... Before the above law was read, and observed and acted upon:

Eliashib the priest; whom some take to be a common priest; so Bishop Usher (a); but he seems rather to be the high priest, by comparing it with Nehemiah 13:28,

having the oversight of the chamber of the house of our God; which has led some to the notion of his being a common priest; but chamber may be put for chambers, and those for the whole house or temple, which the high priest had the greatest concern in, and oversight of:

was allied to Tobiah; the servant and Ammonite, an inveterate enemy of the Jews, Nehemiah 2:10, having married a daughter of Shecaniah, and his son a daughter of Meshullam, who were both priests, and so as it seems related to Eliashib, Nehemiah 6:18.

(a) Annal. Vet. Test. p. 200.

4, 5. before this—The practice of these mixed marriages, in open neglect or violation of the law, had become so common, that even the pontifical house, which ought to have set a better example, was polluted by such an impure mixture.

Eliashib the priest … was allied unto Tobiah—This person was the high priest (Ne 13:28; also Ne 3:1), who, by virtue of his dignified office, had the superintendence and control of the apartments attached to the temple. The laxity of his principles, as well as of his practice, is sufficiently apparent from his contracting a family connection with so notorious an enemy of Israel as Tobiah. But his obsequious attentions had carried him much farther; for to accommodate so important a person as Tobiah on his occasional visits to Jerusalem, Eliashib had provided him a splendid apartment in the temple. The introduction of so gross an impropriety can be accounted for in no other way than by supposing that in the absence of the priests and the cessation of the services, the temple was regarded as a common public building, which might, in the circumstances, be appropriated as a palatial residence.

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