Nehemiah 10:28–10:31, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Nehemiah 10:28–10:31
The wider community joins a specific oath
Wives and understanding children enter the oath
The rest of the people, priests, Levites, porters, singers, Nethinim, and all who have separated themselves from the people of the lands unto the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, every one having knowledge and having understanding, cleave to their brethren and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law given by Moses.
Marriage, Sabbath trade, and seventh-year release are named together
They will not give their daughters to the people of the land, nor take the people's daughters for their sons. If the people of the land bring ware or victuals on the Sabbath, they will not buy on Sabbath or on a holy day. They will leave the seventh year and the exaction of every debt.
Boundary practices sit beside rest, commerce limits, and debt release. Holiness here is not reduced to marriage rules, and the oath is not a racial supremacy code. Real families and markets are in view; coercion of membership remains a live risk whenever an oath is communal.
How this should shape us
Give people enough understanding to know what they are joining. Protect families and outsiders from punitive identity rules. Give debt relief and rest the same weight you give boundary pledges.
Teach it back
Explain Nehemiah 10:28–10:31 in your own words. Include its movement, one source-supported detail, one material uncertainty, one affected or obscured person, and one misuse the context rules out.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful interpreters disagree?
Best judgment: The exact relation to Ezra's intermarriage policy and the scope of seventh-year debt release are debated; modern race categories are anachronistic.
How certain? probableResearch trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Nehemiah 10:28–10:31, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, clause relationships, repeated roots, Persian titles, names, and translation controls.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Neh.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 10:28–10:31
Supports: A unit-bounded KJV comparison plus only the lexical, grammatical, textual, historical, literary, or older-English notes actually printed for these verses; silence in the notes is not treated as positive evidence.
NET Bible Nehemiah PDF, printed pp. 775–776, translation text and any translator notes printed for 10:28–10:31
Supports: A bounded book-level control for competing memoir, source, editorial-layer, Ezra-Nehemiah, list, chronology, and literary-composition proposals; it is not cited as verse-specific historical proof.
Fulton pp. 5–10, Carr pp. 11–20, Klein pp. 21–27, and Wright pp. 28–36 in JHS 7 (2007), article 12; book-level composition control applied to Nehemiah 10:28–10:31
Supports: Only publisher-visible framing of Ezra-Nehemiah around trauma, power, identity, community, worship, prayer, and leadership.
Nam, The Theology of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (CUP, 2024), official publisher description, front matter pp. vii–viii, chapter abstracts, and excerpt p. 1
Supports: A bounded Persian-period setting control for Jerusalem's small scale, disputed wall line, gates, repopulation, temple-centered administration, Sabbath, intermarriage, and archaeological limits; it is not cited as independent proof of this unit.
Sivan, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 'Jerusalem and Iran,' Vol. XIV, Fasc. 6, pp. 632–634, complete Achaemenid-period section; book-level setting control for Nehemiah 10:28–10:31
Supports: Major alternatives around marriage dissolution, identity construction, land, economics, gender, and the textually silenced interests of wives and children.
Venter, HTS 74(4) (2018), a4854, pp. 1–12: synchronic readings pp. 1–2, composition pp. 3–5, social-history, identity, gender, and economics pp. 5–12
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Exact location: Nehemiah 10:28–10:31, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Nehemiah
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, clause relationships, repeated roots, Persian titles, names, and translation controls.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Neh.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 10:28–10:31
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Nehemiah with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: A unit-bounded KJV comparison plus only the lexical, grammatical, textual, historical, literary, or older-English notes actually printed for these verses; silence in the notes is not treated as positive evidence.
Exact location: NET Bible Nehemiah PDF, printed pp. 775–776, translation text and any translator notes printed for 10:28–10:31
Open source ↗peer reviewed scholarly forum
Revisiting the Composition of Ezra-Nehemiah: In Conversation with Jacob Wright's Rebuilding Identity
Deirdre N. Fulton, David M. Carr, Ralph W. Klein, Gary N. Knoppers, and Jacob L. Wright
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 7, article 12, 2007
Supports: A bounded book-level control for competing memoir, source, editorial-layer, Ezra-Nehemiah, list, chronology, and literary-composition proposals; it is not cited as verse-specific historical proof.
Exact location: Fulton pp. 5–10, Carr pp. 11–20, Klein pp. 21–27, and Wright pp. 28–36 in JHS 7 (2007), article 12; book-level composition control applied to Nehemiah 10:28–10:31
Open source ↗modern scholarly monograph limited preview
The Theology of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah
Roger S. Nam
Cambridge University Press, 2024
Supports: Only publisher-visible framing of Ezra-Nehemiah around trauma, power, identity, community, worship, prayer, and leadership.
Exact location: Nam, The Theology of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (CUP, 2024), official publisher description, front matter pp. vii–viii, chapter abstracts, and excerpt p. 1
Open source ↗scholarly encyclopedia article
Jerusalem and Iran
Hagith Sivan
Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. XIV, Fasc. 6, pp. 632-634, 2008; updated 2012
Supports: A bounded Persian-period setting control for Jerusalem's small scale, disputed wall line, gates, repopulation, temple-centered administration, Sabbath, intermarriage, and archaeological limits; it is not cited as independent proof of this unit.
Exact location: Sivan, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 'Jerusalem and Iran,' Vol. XIV, Fasc. 6, pp. 632–634, complete Achaemenid-period section; book-level setting control for Nehemiah 10:28–10:31
Open source ↗peer reviewed scholarly article
The dissolving of marriages in Ezra 9-10 and Nehemiah 13 revisited
Pieter M. Venter
HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 74(4), a4854, 2018
Supports: Major alternatives around marriage dissolution, identity construction, land, economics, gender, and the textually silenced interests of wives and children.
Exact location: Venter, HTS 74(4) (2018), a4854, pp. 1–12: synchronic readings pp. 1–2, composition pp. 3–5, social-history, identity, gender, and economics pp. 5–12
Open source ↗