¹⁵ that he may not profane his offspring among his people, for ^(A)I am the Lord who sanctifies him.”

¹⁴ For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. ^(A)Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

^16 (A)If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.

^15 (A)Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?^[a] And what was the one God^[b] seeking?^{[c] (B)}Godly offspring. So guard yourselves^[d] in your spirit, and let none of you be ^(C)faithless to the wife of your youth.

¹¹ Judah has been ^(A)faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For ^(B)Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god.

²³ In those days also I saw the Jews ^(A)who had married women ^(B)of Ashdod, ^(C)Ammon, and ^(D)Moab. ²⁴ And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. ^25 (E)And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. ^(F)And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. ^26 (G)Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? ^(H)Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was ^(I)beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. ²⁷ Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and ^(J)act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women?”

²⁸ And one of the sons of ^(K)Jehoiada, the son of ^(L)Eliashib the high priest, was the son-in-law of ^(M)Sanballat the Horonite. Therefore I chased him from me. ^29 (N)Remember them, O my God, because they have desecrated the priesthood ^(O)and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.

^2 (A)For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the ^(B)holy race^[a] has ^(C)mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost.”

⁶² These sought their registration among those enrolled in the genealogies, but they were not found there, and ^(A)so they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.

⁸ You shall sanctify him, for he offers the bread of your God. He shall be holy to you, for ^(A)I, the Lord, who sanctify you, ^(B)am holy.