Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
Nehemiah 10:31 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 31. 31And if the people of the land bring ware or any victuals on the sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy it of them on the sabbath, or on the holy day: and that we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
This verse joins Sabbath and holy-day commerce limits with seventh-year land rest and release of every debt.
Read It With
- Nehemiah 10:28–10:31
Read Nehemiah 10:28–10:31 together. This verse joins Sabbath and holy-day commerce limits with seventh-year land rest and release of every debt. Read Nehemiah 10:28–10:31 as one complete scene: Temple workers and the wider community, including wives and understanding children, join an oath to Torah with commitments about marriage, trade, land rest, and debts.
Why This Verse Appears Here
The wider people, wives, children with understanding, separation language, oath, marriage commitment, Sabbath commerce, seventh-year release, and debt form one adherence section. Its placement advances the book. The unit widens agency beyond male sealers and binds boundary practices to economic Sabbath obligations rather than reducing holiness to marriage rules. Within that movement, this verse joins Sabbath and holy-day commerce limits with seventh-year land rest and release of every debt.
Read Nehemiah 10:28–31 together
Why these verses belong together: The wider people, wives, children with understanding, separation language, oath, marriage commitment, Sabbath commerce, seventh-year release, and debt form one adherence section.
Verse 28. 28 And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinims, and all they that had 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;
Verse 29. 29 They clave to their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse, and into an oath, to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord, and his judgments and his statutes;
Verse 30. 30 And that we would not give our daughters unto the people of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons:
Verse 31. 31 And if the people of the land bring ware or any victuals on the sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy it of them on the sabbath, or on the holy day: and that we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt.
Follow the Context
- Temple workers and the wider community, including wives and understanding children, join an oath to Torah with commitments about marriage, trade, land rest, and debts.
- The unit widens agency beyond male sealers and binds boundary practices to economic Sabbath obligations rather than reducing holiness to marriage rules.
What This Verse Is Not Saying
Nehemiah 10:31 does not reduce its distinct role—joins Sabbath and holy-day commerce limits with seventh-year land rest and release of every debt—to a standalone claim or rule; read it within Nehemiah 10:28–10:31. The covenant oath does not authorize coerced religious membership, racial marriage rules, anti-immigrant policy, or punitive treatment of outsiders.
What Remains True
Within Nehemiah 10:28–10:31, Nehemiah 10:31 joins Sabbath and holy-day commerce limits with seventh-year land rest and release of every debt. Commitment to a community's covenant must include informed participation, economic justice, rest, and limits on debt.
How It Can Shape Life
- At Nehemiah 10:31, attend to how the verse joins Sabbath and holy-day commerce limits with seventh-year land rest and release of every debt. Make membership intelligible and voluntary where possible, protect families and outsiders, and give debt relief and labor rest equal attention with identity boundaries.
Teach It Back
Explain Nehemiah 10:31's precise role in Nehemiah 10:28–10:31. Include the first historical horizon, the surrounding verses, one person or cost that could be obscured, material uncertainty, and one conclusion this verse does not authorize.
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Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Nehemiah 10:28–10:31 — The wider community joins a specific oathSources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
The exact relation to Ezra's intermarriage policy and the scope of seventh-year debt release are debated; modern race categories are anachronistic.
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
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 ↗