²³ Moreover, in those days I also saw Jews who had married the women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. ²⁴ Half of their children spoke in the language of Ashdod, yet none of them could recognize the language of the Jews. This was true language by language. ²⁵ So I confronted them and cursed them. Some of the men I beat. Others, I plucked out their hair. Also, I made them swear an oath by God and said to them, “You shall neither give your daughters to their sons, nor marry their daughters to your sons or to yourselves. ²⁶ Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, who made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women caused even him to sin. ²⁷ Should we then listen to you, the ones doing all this great evil, who are behaving unfaithfully against our God by bedding foreign women?”

²⁸ Also, one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law to 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.