20. Once or twice the traders and merchants of every kind of merchandise spent the night outside Jerusalem.
21. Then I warned them and said to them, "Why do you spend the night in front of the wall? If you do so again, I will use force against you." From that time on they did not come on the sabbath.
22. And I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come as gatekeepers to sanctify the sabbath day. For this also remember me, O my God, and have compassion on me according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness.
23. In those days I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab.
24. As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah, but the language of his own people.
25. So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, "You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take of their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.
26. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel; nevertheless the foreign women caused even him to sin.
27. Do we then hear about you that you have committed all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?"
28. Even one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite, so I drove him away from me.
29. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.
30. Thus I purified them from everything foreign and appointed duties for the priests and the Levites, each in his task,
31. and I arranged for the supply of wood at appointed times and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good.