21. So I warned them and said to them, “Why do you spend the night next to the wall? If you do so again, I will send you away by force.” From that time on they stopped coming on the Sabbath.
22. Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves so that they could come and, as guardians of the gates, sanctify the Sabbath day.Remember me, O my God, concerning this also, and spare me according to Your abundant mercy.
23. Moreover, in those days I also saw Jews who had married the women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.
24. Half of their children spoke in the language of Ashdod, yet none of them could recognize the language of the Jews. This was true language by language.
25. So I confronted them and cursed them. Some of the men I beat. Others, I plucked out their hair. Also, I made them swear an oath by God and said to them, “You shall neither give your daughters to their sons, nor marry their daughters to your sons or to yourselves.
26. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, who made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women caused even him to sin.
27. Should we then listen to you, the ones doing all this great evil, who are behaving unfaithfully against our God by bedding foreign women?”
28. Also, one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite, so I drove him away from me.
29. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.
30. Thus I purified them from everything foreign and appointed work crews for the priests and the Levites, each to his task,
31. and I provided the wood offering, at the appointed times, and the first fruits.Remember me, O my God, for good.