Losing the ability to understand the Bible (Neh 13:23-31)

A couple I know from England immigrated to Argentina. The husband was English and the wife Argentinian, their children were born there, went to school there, and outside of the home spoke only Spanish. Even at home, where the father insisted that the children speak English with him, they sometimes mixed Spanish words into their English sentences. The influence of Spanish also crept into their English grammar as Spanish became more dominant in their lives through school and engagement with the world outside the home. Overtime, they increasingly found speaking in English irksome and started replying to their dad in Spanish until eventually he gave up trying to maintain English at home. By the time the children grew to adulthood, they lost the ability to communicate in English, apart from a few fixed phrases.

Mixed marriages and the loss of language

As the closing episode of Nehemiah unfolds, we return once again to the issue of mixed marriages and its impact on language (Neh 13:23). Ashdod was the neighbouring Persian province to Judah along the south-western coastline that was traditionally Philistine territory. Ammon was east of the Jordan and Moab towards the south-east, on the other side of the Dead Sea. Given the proximity of these areas, especially Ashdod, marriages across the provincial border would not have been surprising. The loss of language (Neh 13:24), however, was critical for the Jews because their faith and way of life were centred on God’s Word. Losing the ability to understand what God had commanded, the principles He taught in His law meant a loss of living for God.

Nehemiah deals with the problem

Nehemiah’s reaction reads to us as excessive and more like a temper tantrum than a dignified way of dealing with the problem (Neh 13:25). The fact that he contended with those concerned (a word that also occurs in connection with the other offences in Neh 13:11, 17) suggests that he probably got them all together, so his actions may have been a ceremonial expression that they were under a curse because they broke their earlier commitment not to intermarry (Neh 10:29-30). The Hebrew expression used in v.29 was ‘to enter into a curse’, as if by disobeying God they stepped into the sphere where the curse was operative. Nehemiah reminds them that even someone outstandingly great, loved by God and devoted to Him, like Solomon, could fall (Neh 13:26; 1 Kings 11:1-8). It was particularly serious when the spiritual leadership was involved so that a son of the high priest had to be expelled (Neh 13:28) because he married into the family of Sanballat, who was hostile to the Jewish restoration efforts (e.g. Neh 2:19; 4:7-8).[1] Nevertheless, Nehemiah does not require divorce like Ezra and only tries to ensure that the issue is not repeated (Neh 13:25).[2]

The Bible as a foreign language

While the particular aspects of the problem in Nehemiah are not easily applied in our Western context,[3] we as Christians are in danger of losing our ability to read and understand the Bible in a different sense. The Bible’s concepts, especially the Old Testament’s, are like a foreign language to many.[4] Since culture and its ideas are so dominant around us, promoted aggressively through news-outlets, social media, advertising, films, and so on, we are increasingly losing our ability to speak with the vocabulary and grammar of the Bible. I do not mean that we should borrow phrases from the Bible or speak a kind of ‘Christianese’, rather that we need to understand the Bible’s perspective and operate with its framework. As even our churches become places where cultural concepts seep into our thinking and where thorough teaching of the Bible is often missing, secular ideas crowd out the biblical worldview until we are reduced to speaking a kind of ‘pidgin Bible’ that can no longer express nuances and that makes our communication of the gospel and God’s truth at best shallow and at worst a distortion. May we recognise the necessity of making God’s Word central in our lives that helps us to know the Lord more deeply and live for Him more faithfully.

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[1] Eliashib the high priest is a different person from Eliashib the priest in Neh 13:4. The high priest was expected to demonstrate a higher level of holiness than the average Israelite, so he had to marry a virgin from Israel (Lev 21:13-15).

[2] H.G.M. Williamson explains Nehemiah’s approach of containment by arguing that the issue was a localised problem rather than widespread as in Ezra’s time (Ezra 9-10). Ezra, Nehemiah, WBC 16 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1985), 398.

[3] Today, the impact of an unbelieving spouse on the believer is mitigated by Western individualism and the fact that religion for us in the West is a private matter. In many marriages, couples hold diverse views politically, religiously, or spiritually, yet can keep their convictions and practices and navigate their differences without too much conflict. Even if there is a language divide in a mixed marriage, the variety of Bible translations make this a non-issue. Still, marriage with an unbeliever is not ideal (cf. 1 Cor 7:39) and must inevitably cause heartache to the believer, as well as adversely affect the faith of any children.

[4] I am borrowing language as a metaphor for understanding the Bible from Brent A. Strawn, who compares the different stages of how a language dies out to how we are increasingly losing our knowledge of (especially) the OT, as well as the vocabulary to address the world’s problems through biblical categories and within a biblical framework. The Old Testament is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).

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