have lost his
strength, and have had to grind blindly and miserably at the mill. If
Solomon had not kept bad company idolatry would never have ruined
Jerusalem. If Rehoboam had not kept bad company the kingdom of Israel
would never have been divided; and again, and again, both in the history
of the past and in the story of the present, we see men and women led
astray by keeping bad company.

We have already seen Nehemiah taking strong measures to put down three
of the great glaring evils which he found in Jerusalem on his return. We
have now to see him battling with this dreadful curse and snare--bad
company. If the other three evils needed strong measures, Nehemiah feels
there is a tenfold need to take decided steps in this fourth and
all-important matter.

For what does he find as he walks through the streets of Jerusalem? He
discovers that the inhabitants of the holy city are fast becoming
foreigners and heathen. He hears the very children in the street talking
a language he cannot understand.

So common has marriage with heathen foreigners become, that Nehemiah
sees clearly that unless something is done to put a stop to it the next
generation will grow up utterly un-Jewish in language, appearance, and
dross, and worse still, heathen in their religion, kneeling down to
idols of wood and stone, and carrying on in Jerusalem itself all the
vile customs and abominations of the heathen.

'If the girls are pretty and nice, and if the men like them, why should
not they please themselves?' So the Jerusalem folk had talked in
Nehemiah's absence. They quite forgot to what it was all leading. They
shut their eyes to the danger of keeping bad company, they thought only
of what was pleasant and of what they liked, they quite forgot to ask
what was right, and what was the will of God.

Nehemiah, as governor of Jerusalem, summons into his presence, and
commands to appear before him in his judicial court, every man in
Jerusalem who had married a foreign heathen wife.

When all were assembled:

(1) He contended with them, _i.e._ he rebuked and argued with them, as
he had done with the rulers on the question of Sabbath observance.

(2) He cursed them, or as it is in the margin 'he reviled them.'
Probably he pronounced, as governor of Jerusalem, speaking in the name
of God, the judgments of God on those who broke his law.

(3) He smote certain of them. That is, he had some of them publicly
beaten. Nehemiah called upon the o