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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Nehemiah 13:23 - 13:23
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Marriages with foreign wives dissolved. - Neh 13:23 and Neh 13:24. “In those days I also saw, i.e., visited, the Jews who had brought home Ashdodite, Ammonite, and Moabite wives; and half of their children spoke the speech of Ashdod, because they understood not how to speak the Jews' language, and according to the speech of one and of another people.” It is not said, I saw Jews; but, the Jews who ... Hence Bertheau rightly infers, that Nehemiah at this time found an opportunity of seeing them, perhaps upon a journey through the province. From the circumstance, too, that a portion of the children of these marriages were not able to speak the language of the Jews, but spoke the language of Ashdod, or of this or that nation from which their mothers were descended, we may conclude with tolerable certainty, that these people dwelt neither in Jerusalem nor in the midst of the Jewish community, but on the borders of the nations to which their wives belonged. הֹושִׁיב like Ezr 10:2. וּבְנֵיהֶם precedes in an absolute sense: and as for their children, one half (of them) spake. יְהוּדִית (comp. 2Ki 18:26; Isa 36:11; 2Ch 32:18) is the language of the Jewish community, the vernacular Hebrew. The sentence וגו וְאֵינָם is an explanatory parenthesis, וָעָם עַם וְכִלְשֹׁן still depending upon מְדַבֵר: spake according to the language, i.e., spake the language, of this and that people (of their mothers). The speech of Ashdod is that of the Philistines, which, according to Hitzig (Urgeschichte u. Mythol. der Philistäer), belonged to the Indo-Germanic group. The languages, however, of the Moabites and Ammonites were undoubtedly Shemitic, but so dialectically different from the Hebrew, that they might be regarded as foreign tongues.