Nehemiah 13:28

And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son in law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(28) I chased him from me.—Eliashib himself was allied by marriage to Tobiah, and one of his grandsons was now brought into prominence as married to Sanballat. Him Nehemiah drove into exile.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

13:23-31 If either parent be ungodly, corrupt nature will incline the children to take after that one; which is a strong reason why Christians should not be unequally yoked. In the education of children, great care should be taken about the government of their tongues; that they learn not the language of Ashdod, no impious or impure talk, no corrupt communication. 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. Here are Nehemiah's prayers on this occasion He prays, Remember them, O my God. Lord, convince and convert them; put them in mind of what they should be and do. The best services to the public have been forgotten by those for whom they were done, therefore Nehemiah refers himself to God, to recompense him. This may well be the summary of our petitions; we need no more to make us happy than this; Remember me, O my God, for good. We may humbly hope that the Lord will remember us and our services, although, after lives of unwearied activity and usefulness, we shall still see cause to abhor ourselves and repent in dust and ashes, and to cry out with Nehemiah, Spare me, O my God, according to the greatness of they mercy.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The speech of Ashdod - The Philistine language, which was akin to that of Egypt.

According to the language of each people - The children spoke a mixed dialect - half-Philistine, half-Hebrew.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

25. cursed them—that is, pronounced on them an anathema which entailed excommunication.

smote … and plucked off their hair—To cut off the hair of offenders seems to be a punishment rather disgraceful than severe; yet it is supposed that pain was added to disgrace, and that they tore off the hair with violence as if they were plucking a bird alive.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Joiada; said by Josephus to be that Manasses who by Sanballat’s interest procured liberty to build the Samaritan temple in Mount Gerizim; to which those priests who had married strange wives, or been otherwise criminal, betook themselves, and with or after them others of the people in the same or like circumstances.

I chased him from me, i.e. from my presence and court, and from the city and temple, and all the privileges of the priesthood, and from the whole congregation and church of Israel, whereof I am a member.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest,.... A grandson of the high priest; for the high priest here is Eliashib, according to our version, and not Joiada his son, according to Dr. Prideaux (i); the person designed, Josephus (k) makes to be Manasseh, the brother of Jaddua the high priest: was

son in law to Sanballat the Horonite; married a daughter of his, who was the avowed enemy of the Jewish nation; and for whom, according to the same writer, Sanballat obtained leave of Alexander to build a temple on Mount Gerizim; but this is to protract the age of Nehemiah and Sanballat to too great a length; besides, Eliashib seems to have been now high priest, and not even his son Joiada, and much less Jaddua, a grandson of Joiada:

therefore I chased him from me; drove him from his court, suffered him not to minister at the altar; banished him from the city, as Jarchi, and even from the land of Judea.

(i) Connect. par. 1. p. 412. (k) Antiqu. l. 11. c. 8. sect. 2, 4.

Geneva Study Bible

And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son in law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

28. one of the sons of Joiada] We should gather that Eliashib the grandfather was still alive, since the emphasis lies on the relationship of the offender to the high-priest. ‘Joiada.’ Cf. Nehemiah 12:10. On Eliashib see note on Nehemiah 13:4.

Song of Solomon in law to Sanballat the Horonite] For Sanballat, cf. Nehemiah 2:10, Neh 3:33, Nehemiah 4:1, Nehemiah 6:1. The marriage of the high-priest’s grandson with Sanballat’s daughter was an offence in every way. (1) It showed treasonable alliance with Israel’s bitterest foe, (2) it violated the rule laid down in Ezra’s time against mixed marriages, (3) it compromised the purity of the high-priestly house (Leviticus 21:6 ff.).

therefore I chased him from me] LXX. ἐξέβρασα. Obviously because he was contumacious, and refused to put away his wife. Rashi’s explanation that Nehemiah chased him away for fear of his playing the spy and reporting the means of entering and leaving the city, is strangely inadequate. Josephus relates a story so similar to this that it should probably be referred to the same events, although he must have obtained it from some other source. According to Josephus (Ant. xi. 7, 8) a certain Manasse, the brother of Jaddua and son of John or Johanan (and therefore grandson not son of Joiada) took to wife Nikaso, the daughter of the Cuthaean Sanballat. Refusing to put her away, he was expelled from Jerusalem by the Jewish nobles, and took refuge with the Samaritans, among whom, as a member of the high-priestly family, he set up upon Mt Gerizim a rival temple and priesthood. It will be seen that Josephus assigns this to the period of Alexander the Great. But there it is probable that Josephus is at fault; for he completely fails to realize the interval of time between the Return from the Exile and the Age of Alexander; and it is to this chronological confusion rather than to a mistake of ‘Jaddua’ for ‘Joiada’ that we should ascribe the cause of his principal variation from the Memoirs of Nehemiah. For (1) in Alexander’s time the organization of the Samaritan worship had long been fully established, (2) it is very improbable that a repetition of such a striking incident should occur just a century after Nehemiah’s time.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 28. - One of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib. See Nehemiah 12:10. Eliashib seems to have been still living, though one of his grandsons was of age to contract a marriage. Was son-in-law to Sanballat, the Horonite. Had therefore married one of his daughters, while Eliashib himself was connected by marriage with Tobiah. The defection of the high priestly family from those principles which Ezra and Nehemiah regarded as vital is only too apparent. I chased him from me. i.e. I forced him to quit the country and become an exile. We may suppose that he refused to repudiate his foreign wife, and preferred to take refuge with Sanballat in Samaria. Nehemiah 13:28

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Nehemiah acted with greater severity towards one of the sons of Joiada the high priest, and son-in-law of Sanballat. He drove him from him (מעלי, that he might not be a burden to me). The reason for this is not expressly stated, but is involved in the fact that he was son-in-law to Sanballat, i.e., had married a daughter of Sanballat the Horonite (Nehemiah 2:10), who was so hostile to Nehemiah and to the Jewish community in general, and would not comply with the demand of Nehemiah that he should dismiss this wife. In this case, Nehemiah was obliged to interfere with authority. For this marriage was a pollution of the priesthood, and a breach of the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Hence he closes the narrative of this occurrence with the wish, Nehemiah 13:29, that God would be mindful of them (להם, of those who had done such evil) on account of this pollution, etc., i.e., would punish or chastise them for it. גּאלי, stat. constr. pl. from גּאל, pollution (plurale tant.). It was a pollution of the priesthood to marry a heathen woman, such marriage being opposed to the sacredness of the priestly office, which a priest was to consider even in the choice of a wife, and because of which he might marry neither a whore, nor a feeble nor a divorced woman, while the high priest mighty marry only a virgin of his own people (Leviticus 21:7, Leviticus 21:14). The son of Joiada who had married a daughter of Sanballat was not indeed his presumptive successor (Johanan, Nehemiah 12:11), for then he would have been spoken of by name, but a younger son, and therefore a simple priest; he was, however, so nearly related to the high priest, that by his marriage with a heathen woman the holiness of the high-priestly house was polluted, and therewith also "the covenant of the priesthood," i.e., not the covenant of the everlasting priesthood which God granted to Phinehas for his zeal (Numbers 25:13), but the covenant which God concluded with the tribe of Levi, the priesthood, and the Levites, by choosing the tribe of Levi, and of that tribe Aaron and his descendants, to be His priest (לו לכהנו, Exodus 28:1). This covenant required, on the part of the priests, that they should be "holy to the Lord" (Leviticus 21:6, Leviticus 21:8), who had chosen them to be ministers of His sanctuary and stewards of His grace.

Josephus (Ant. xi. 7. 2) relates the similar fact, that Manasseh, a brother of the high priest Jaddua, married Nikaso, a daughter of the satrap Sanballat, a Cuthite; that when the Jewish authorities on that account excluded him from the priesthood, he established, by the assistant of his father-in-law, the temple and worship on Mount Gerizim (xi. 8. 2-4), and that many priests made common cause with him. Now, though Josephus calls this Manasseh a brother of Jaddua, thus making him a grandson of Joiada, and transposing the establishment of the Samaritan worship on Gerizim to the last years of Darius Codomannus and the first of Alexander of Macedon, it can scarcely be misunderstood that, notwithstanding these discrepancies, the same occurrence which Nehemiah relates in the present verses is intended by Josephus. The view of older theologians, to which also Petermann (art. Samaria in Herzog's Realenc. xiii. p. 366f.) assents, that there were two Sanballats, one in the days of Nehemiah, the other in the time of Alexander the Great, and that both had sons-in-law belonging to the high-priestly family, is very improbable; and the transposition of the fact by Josephus to the times of Darius Codomannus and Alexander accords with the usual and universally acknowledged incorrectness of his chronological combinations. He makes, e.g., Nehemiah arrive at Jerusalem in the twenty-fifth year of Xerxes, instead of the twentieth of Artaxerxes, while Xerxes reigned only twenty years.