Nehemiah 13

After a term as governor, Nehemiah had returned to Persia; coming back, he finds the covenant already broken. Tobiah has been given a room in the temple courts, the Levites’ portions have been withheld so that they scattered to their fields, the Sabbath is profaned by trade, and Judeans have again married foreign wives whose children cannot even speak the language of Judah. Nehemiah vigorously reforms each abuse — expelling Tobiah, restoring the Levites, shutting the gates on the Sabbath, and confronting the intermarriage — and closes the book with the repeated prayer, “Remember me, O my God, for good.”