[JSOT21 (1981)111-117]

NEHEMIAH 10 AS AN EXAMPLE OF
EARLY JEWISH BIBLICAL EXEGESIS

David J.A. Clines

Department of Biblical Studies
The University of Sheffield
Sheffield, S10 2TN, England

Nehemiah 10, despite its forbidding portal of 27 verses of

proper names, is in reality a small treasure house of post-exilic
interpretations of earlier Israelite law / ! / .
As far as I know, it has not previously been looked at closely
from the perspective of its interpretations of older texts /2/; if
in this respect the present paper has something novel about it,
in respect of its Gattung it is a conventional study of "inner-
biblical exegesis" not unfamiliar in current scholarship. How-
ever, compared with many such studies, for example of re-
interpretation of older material within the texts of Isaiah or
Jeremiah, the present text offers us a peculiar advantage: it is
an entity independent of the texts it is commenting on, and
does not need to be first peeled off as a younger layer from an
apparently unitary text.

1. Character of the document

The document contained in this chapter consists of the
following: heading (10:1) / 3 / , list of signatories (10:2-28), pledge
to keep "God's law" in general (10:29-30), followed by a pledge
to keep a set of particular laws (10:31-40). The document does
not record a bi-lateral b e rît (it is not a "covenant", as RSV of
10:1 [9:38] has it), nor is it a collection of priestly tôrôt. It is,
ostensibly, a unilateral pledge by the whole community, priests,
Lévites, and people (as represented by family heads). Less
obviously, it is a set of halakot probably devised by priestly or
levitical lawyers and thereafter assented to by the populace.
After the general agreement to "walk in God's law" (v.30),
particular halakot follow. Every halakah here has something
novel about it, I would argue, but at the same time it represents
the result of exegetical work upon previously existing laws.

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 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 21 (1981)

2. Historical setting
As for the historical setting of this document, three factors
are presupposed in the interpretation here set out, though they
cannot be argued in detail at this time:
(a) That before the time of Nehemiah 10 Ezra had appointed
magistrates and judges, as he had been required to do by the
firman of Artaxexes (Ezr. 7:25), and that such a bêt midräsh as
is depicted in Nehemiah 8:13-15 was in existence.
(b) That the activity of Nehemiah's so-called second
governorship (Neh. 13) preceded the making of the pledge of
Nehemiah 10.
(c) That, on the subjects dealt with in this chapter, laws
identical with the Pentateuch as we now have it were known in
Judea (or, if one prefers to think so, the Pentateuch itself was
already in existence).
These assumptions seem to me to make the best sense of the
origin, contents and detail of this pledge document of
Nehemiah 10, but only the third is necessary to the argument of
this paper: namely that Pentateuchal laws form the basis of the
exegesis that is developed in this chapter.

3. Types of legal development

Five different types of legal development may be traced in
the stipulations of this pledge document:
(a) Creation of facilitating law, i.e. establishment of
machinery for carrying out a prescription; thus 10:35, with
arrangements for the collection and transport of wood, enables
the law of Leviticus 6:1-6, that the fire should burn continually
on the altar, to be carried out.
(b) Revision of facilitating law, i.e. machinery for carrying
out a prescription. One such example may be seen in 10:39 ("it
is the Lévites who collect"); if authentic, this phrase makes it
easier for the tithe law to be carried out by substituting the
collection of tithes by Lévites at depots in rural towns for the
earlier responsibility of citizens to bring their tithes to the
temple themselves (cf. 13:5; Deut. 14:23-26; Mal. 3:10). The
presence of a priest at the receipt of the levitical tithe (10:39)
is a similar revision.
(c) Creation of a new prescription from a precedent in
Pentateuchal law: thus what had been in Exodus 30:11-16 an
occasional levy for the sanctuary becomes here an annual
temple tax (10:33).
(d) Re-definition of categories, always in the direction of

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greater comprehensiveness: thus first-fruits is defined for the

first time as including the fruit of trees (v.36; Deut. 26:2 speaks
only of the first of the produce of all the ground); work prohi-
bited on the sabbath includes for the first time the business of
buying (v.32); and foreigners prohibited from marriage with
Israelites include for the first time all Palestinians ( c ammê
hä'äres, v.31).
(e) Integration of distinct and therefore potentially compet-
ing prescriptions: thus, while it could have been argued that the
various taxes in the Pentateuch were to be viewed as alterna-
tive methods of raising revenue, 10:36-40 specifies that all the
Pentateuchal taxes are cumulative: first-fruits, prime produce
(rë*Sît), and tithes are taxes that must be added together; and
the function of the present pledge is not only to ensure that
taxes will be paid, but also to guarantee that the laws about
taxes will be interpreted in this way. Similarly, the fallow-year
law of Exodus 23:1 Of. is not to be replaced by the remission-
year law of Deuteronomy 15:1-8 - which was a theoretically
possible way of handling the two "seven-year" laws - but is to
be observed in conjunction with it. In both cases it is likely that
the law had only been partially observed prior to this time.

4. Exegetical principles
The exegetical principles guiding (or, permitting) these
developments are capable of various types of analyses. The
following are some of the more obvious:
(a) The Pentateuchal (or if one prefers to say simply, the
existing) law is a relatively closed system; nothing in Nehemiah
10 is radically new; every halakah has some connection with a
Pentateuchal prescription.
(b) On the other hand, Pentateuchal (or, existing) law is
partially open: extension or re-application is possible, even to
the extent, for example, of bypassing the letter of the law for
the sake of its spirit.
(c) Pentateuchal law requires ancillary law in order to be
effectual.
(d) Pentateuchal law is regarded as essentially harmonious;
apparent tensions tend to be solved by a principle of addition
rather than by mediation or compromise.

5. Observations on the exegetical principles

Three observations upon these exegetical principles may be
made:

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 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 21 (1981)

(a) The principle of addition as an exegetical method to deal

with tensions tends, in the realm of law, to greater rigour. This
is illustrated by the tax laws, which by this pledge were
probably made more onerous than ever before.
(b) The principle of the necessity of ancillary or facilitating
law may or may not create greater rigour. For such law may be
only the régularisation of what is already customary or the
specification of what is already assumed. Thus, on the one hand,
the specification of the fruit of trees among first-fruits prob-
ably prescribes no change from existing custom; whereas, on the
other hand, the inclusion of buying in the definition of work
prohibited on the sabbath seems to be a new extension of the
law generated by the events described in Nehemiah 13.
(c) The exegetical work lying behind this pledge is
unsystematic both in coverage and in method. There can be
l i t t l e doubt, despite Jepsen and Kellermann / 4 / , that these
halakot are ad hoc responses to problems encountered by
Nehemiah in his so-called second governorship; for all the items
except the sabbatical and remission year correspond to ele-
ments of Nehemiah 13 - and the seventh year issue had no
doubt come under scrutiny because of the crisis portrayed in
Nehemiah 5:1-13. The halakot here may therefore be properly
described as devised to meet contemporary exigencies, and the
exegetical activity they presuppose is therefore quite different
from a systematic consideration of and commentary on the
Pentateuchal law.

6. Nehemiah 10 and earlier law: two examples

Lastly, in several cases the halakot of Nehemiah 10 form the
final link in a chain of legal development throughout the
Biblical period (a development that of course continued in
post-Biblical times). Two examples only fall to be considered
here:
(a) In the case of sabbath laws, what appears to be the
oldest Pentateuchal law (Ex. 34:21) prohibits only male occupa-
tional work, ploughing and harvesting being mentioned as two
examples or l i m i t i n g cases. Later legal collections extend the
law into the domestic sphere (Ex. 35:3 [P] "you shall kindle no
fire in all your dwellings") and broaden its application to include
all members of the community (Ex. 20:10). The scope of the
term "work" is further extended in Jeremiah 17:21 where
carrying burdens, no doubt produce for market, is declared con-
trary to the sabbath law. Against this background, Nehemiah

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10:32 yet further extends the definition of work to include

buying. For while it was already clear that selling was prohi-
bited (cf. Am. 8:5), since that was occupational work, a new
situation had arisen in Nehemiah's time with the setting up of
sabbath markets outside Jerusalem. The traders were non-Jews,
but the purchasers were Jews. The question was this: was non-
occupational, occasional buying to be reckoned as "work" and
thus to be considered contrary to the law? (In England today, by
way of parallel, certain Sunday traders risk prosecution, but
those who buy from them do not.) Following Nehemiah's
vigorous denunciation of buying as a "profanation" of the
sabbath, the halakah of Nehemiah 10:32 prohibits this particular
activity. It is particularly interesting that the other, and more
serious, breaches of sabbath law witnessed by Nehemiah (Neh.
13:15) are not so much as mentioned in this pledge; the reason
can only be that it was clear in those cases what the law was,
whereas in the case of buying the question of its inclusion
within the category of flwork" had not been previously resolved.
(b) In the case of the laws on intermarriage, the oldest law
is most probably Exodus 34:11-16. Though this passage has often
been thought to be largely a Deuteronomistic expansion of
v.lla, Brekelmans has argued convincingly that it contains pre-
or proto-Deuteronomic material / 5 / . The law here specifies the
traditional group of Canaan ite nations (Amorites, Girgashites,
etc.), and forbids marriage with their "daughters". In the next
phase, Deuteronomy 7:1-3, the same list of prohibited nations
appears, but the law is extended by the prohibition of the
marriage of Israelite women to "sons" of these nations. In
Nehemiah 10:31, marriage both of Israelite "daughters" and of
Israelite "sons" is again the subject of the law, but here the
traditional list of the Canaanite nations is abandoned, and the
prohibited nations are subsumed under the category "peoples of
the land" - which clearly means contemporary Palestinians and
includes the Ashdodites, Ammonites and Moabites with whom,
as Nehemiah had seen (13:23), mixed marriages had been
contracted.
Revision, or rather updating, of the law was long overdue. In
Ezra's time, concerned citizens had been obliged to complain to
Ezra (9:1-2) that Jews had intermarried with Canaanites,
Hittites, Perizzites and Jebusites, among others - something
that it had in fact been impossible for anyone to do for several
centuries, since most of these races had long died out or in
some way wholly lost their identity. But in order to bring

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marriages with contemporary non-Jewish races within the scope

of the law, appeal had to be made, rather anachronistically, to
a law that did not explicitly mention the nations with which
marriages had been contracted by Jews of Ezra's time. The new
category employed in the pledge of Nehemiah 10 to describe
aliens with whom marriage was forbidden, viz. "peoples of the
land", was less time-conditioned, even i f less specific than the
Pentateuchal laws had been. Nehemiah himself had, character-
istically, not beaten about the bush when confronted with
marriages w i t h Ashdodites, Ammonites and Moabites (10:23-24);
but Nehemiah's impulsive response of cursing, beating, and
pulling out the hair of those who had not accepted his
interpretation of the law as including these races within the
forbidden category obviously had to be followed up by the more
permanent step of re-wording the law in order to avoid further
dispute.
It is a curious fact that the spirit of the law can be more
rigorous than the letter. A more literalistic interpretation of
the Pentateuchal law would have allowed marriages with
Ashdodites, Ammonites and Moabites - for they are not expli-
c i t l y mentioned among the prohibited nations. Ezra, Nehemiah,
and the scholars of the Nehemian age adopted an interpretation
according to the spirit (as we might say), since plainly the
intention of the Pentateuchal laws was to forbid marriage with
nearby foreigners (Canaanites, Palestinians). But i f the letter of
the law is not always unambiguous, the spirit of the law may be
even more open to debate. Deuteronomy 7 itself in fact prob-
ably advanced a quite different interpretation of the older law,
on the principle of "according to the spirit". In Deuteronomy
the law against intermarriage is set in the context of the holy
war, which can hardly have been of contemporary validity at
whatever reasonable date we put upon Deuteronomy. Both the
command to exterminate the inhabitants of the land and the
command not to intermarry with them function as rhetorical
support for the call to purity of worship, which is the basic
purpose of the holy war material in Deuteronomy. Deutero-
nomy's intermarriage law is more an appeal for the rejection of
foreign cults than a regulation about marriage, since the only
nations specified were most probably no longer in existence by
the time the Deuteronomic law was set f o r t h . But in using the
older law with its conventional list of the seven Canaan ite
nations as a vehicle for a purely religious appeal, the Deutero-
nomic law left itself open to the less "spiritual" and more

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literalistic interpretation of the Nehemian community. In this

case, the spirit "killed", so to speak, while the letter would have
"given life".

NOTES
1 This paper was read as a Short Communication at the
Tenth Congress of the International Organization for the Study
of the Old Testament, in Vienna, 24-29 August, 1980. In keeping
with its character as an oral communication I have not appen-
ded extensive footnotes, but I hope at a later date to develop
further the ideas presented here.
2 Y. Kaufmann's discussion is probably the most thorough to
date: History of the Religion of Israel (Hebrew), vol. 4
(Jerusalem, 1972), pp.331-38; he identifies 18 separate stipula-
tions in this chapter.
3 References throughout are to the Hebrew numeration of
the verses; in Nehemiah 10 the numeration in English versions is
one less than the Hebrew.
4 A. Jepsen, "Nehemia 10", ZAW 66 (1954), 87-106, esp.
97-101; U. Kellermann, Nehemia. Quellen, Überlieferung und
Geschichte (BZAW 102; Berlin, 1967), 37-41.
5 C. Brekelmans, "Die sogennanten deuteronomischen
Elemente in Gen .-Num., ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des
Deuteronomiums", VTS 15 (1965), 90-96, esp. 93f.; cf. also F.
Langlamet, "Israel et 'l'habitant du pays'", RB 76 (1969), 321-50,
481-507.

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