A Mouth Full of Scripture & A Heart Full of Hate: How Should We Understand Nehemiah's Treatment of Foreigners? ~ Nehemiah 13

 

Imagine this scene with me. A nation has been beaten down. It has lost a war it thought it should have won. It has gone through years of humiliation, economic hardship, and frustration. Stronger nations push it around. People feel ashamed of their once-great name. There’s a growing hunger for dignity, stability, and glory again.

And into that atmosphere steps a powerful, charismatic leader. He’s organized. He’s devoted. He believes God is calling him to restore what has been lost. He gathers resources. He convinces government officials to help. He rallies the people. He inspires hope. Walls begin to rise again as a symbol of renewal.

But this leader believes there is one thing holding his nation back—foreigners. People with a different language, a different culture, a different story. People who don’t “fit.” People he fears will weaken the nation’s identity.

So he convinces the community: We must protect ourselves. We must separate from them. We must send them away. I know this sounds like a modern political tragedy, but this story is not about current politics. It is about Nehemiah. And it is in our Bibles.

This is a hard story. We usually lift Nehemiah up as a hero of leadership—and in many ways he was! He loved God. He wanted to rebuild his people’s home. He prayed. He planned. He sacrificed. But the Bible is honest about its heroes. It tells us the truth: even the best leaders can get some things terribly wrong. And friends, Nehemiah got some things terribly wrong.

Today, I want to walk with you through this tension—not to tear down Nehemiah, but to understand what God is teaching us through his story.

Because if we only read Nehemiah, we might think he’s doing exactly what God wants. But if we read the whole Bible through the way of Jesus, we see something else. We see that Nehemiah is trying to protect God’s people in a way that actually contradicts the heartbeat of the biblical story.

And that should make us stop and ask a deeply important question: Where might we be doing the same?

A Leader With Good Intentions—and Blind Spots

Nehemiah comes back to Jerusalem to find the city in shambles. The people are discouraged. The economy is in a mess. Some families are being crushed by debt. Foreign officials threaten them constantly. This is not an easy environment to lead.

So Nehemiah gets to work. He looks out for the poor. fixes the economy. He rebuilds the walls. Life begins to stabilize. People gather to hear the Scriptures again.

And in this revival they read an old command from Deuteronomy 23:1-8—a command about Ammonites and Moabites. A command rooted in a painful memory, when those nations refused to help Israel in a moment of need. But the people misunderstand the command. It had an expiration date – the 10^th generation, which had long since passed. And it was only about specific groups. And even in that same chapter, God says other foreigners, after a few generations, should be welcomed. God even commands Israel to protect runaway slaves from anywhere in the world. This was not an anti-foreigner chapter. It was a very specific warning rooted in a specific historical moment.

But the people in Nehemiah’s day don’t see that. They take a narrow verse and turn it into a broad policy. They decide, verse 13:3 tells us, “Let’s get rid of all foreigners”(Neh. 13:3).

And then Nehemiah returns from Persia and sees something else: Israelite men have married foreign women, and their children don’t speak Hebrew. And instead of asking questions—
Instead of learning their stories—
Instead of discerning who among them loves God—
Instead of remembering Ruth the Moabite… or Rahab the Canaanite… or the “mixed multitude” that left Egypt… or Joseph’s half-Egyptian sons who became major tribes in Israel— Nehemiah reacts with anger.

He shouts curses. He beats people. He pulls out their hair. He forces them to swear oaths. And ultimately, people send their wives and children away. It is heartbreaking.

Now listen: Nehemiah thinks he is being faithful and in many respects he is. He thinks he is protecting the purity of worship. He thinks he is defending Israel from another collapse. His motives are understandable. But the overall biblical story points in a very different direction. Nehemiah reflects the painful recognition and Biblical truth that you can have a mouth full of Scripture and still harbor a heart full of violence and hate.

The Bible’s Bigger Story: “Remember, You Were Foreigners Too”

If you read the whole Old Testament, one command gets repeated again and again, more than almost any other:

“Do not oppress the foreigner.”
“Love them as yourselves.”
“Remember, you were foreigners in Egypt.”

It’s like God knew that Israel would be tempted to forget where they came from. To forget their own history of living as outsiders. Outsiders in Egypt. Outsiders in Babylon. Outsiders in Persia. And when people forget their own experience of vulnerability, it becomes very easy to harden their hearts against others.

But God did everything possible to stop that from happening. He built reminders even into Israel’s worship. Every yearly harvest festival, the festival of Shavuot [Pentecost], was supposed to begin with a declaration found in Deuteronomy 26:5:

“My father was a wandering Aramean…”

In other words: “Our family started as immigrants. As nomads. As landless people relying on the kindness of strangers.” This was more than a political identity but a worshipful one as well.

And then God says, “Celebrate this feast with the foreigners living among you.”
“Make sure they have food.” “Make sure they are welcomed.” Israel was supposed to be the place where outsiders discovered the kindness of God.

So when Nehemiah forces families apart… When the people expel women and children… When they use a sliver of Scripture to justify a sweeping, painful policy… They are not reflecting the heart of God. They are contradicting it.

The book of Ruth – written close to the same time – offers us a foreign wife who helps others and becomes part of the line of King David and even Jesus. The book of Ruth is a voice correcting Nehemiah from inside the Bible itself.

The lesson is powerful:
You can quote Scripture and still miss Scripture. You can defend God with passion and still oppose God’s heart.

Why Did Nehemiah Go Wrong?

Nehemiah’s mistake didn’t come from malice. It came from fear.

Fear shapes us more than we realize. Fear shrinks our imagination. Fear makes us suspicious, protective, defensive. Fear tells us that safety is found in sameness. Fear tells us that people who are different are dangerous. Fear will have us read Scripture in a way that makes others afraid.

Nehemiah had been mocked, threatened, and sabotaged by foreign officials (4:1-3; 6:1-3). That’s real trauma. But he let that pain turn into a general suspicion toward all foreigners. He let personal wounds shape national policy.

And here’s the danger:
When we forget our story, we fear other people’s stories.
When we forget we were outsiders, we treat outsiders as problems instead of people. When we fail to transform our pain, we transmit it.

Israel forgot their story. Nehemiah forgot his story. And if we’re honest, the church often forgets ours too.

A Biblical Warning for Bible Reading Today

We live in a world full of complicated issues—immigration, refugees, war, politics, poverty, gender, race. And whenever people feel anxious or afraid, there is a strong temptation to reach for simple answers and simple slogans.

Sometimes people even reach for Bible verses to justify harshness, exclusion, or protectionism. The temptation is always to simplify:

“The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”
“This one verse answers the whole question.”

But the Bible doesn’t work like that. God calls us to read the whole story, not just isolated verses. He calls us to interpret Scripture with Scripture, particularly with the mission and message of Jesus. And Jesus is our Rabbi. He calls us to let his compassion, his hospitality, his generous heart guide us in our Bible reading (John 5:39-40).

We follow a Bible-reading Savior who welcomed Samaritans, Romans, prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, and traitors. We follow a teacher who told us that the greatest command is love. We follow a Lord who broke down “the dividing wall of hostility” between peoples. We are a church born at Pentecost, when God spoke through many languages at once, not through one purified language.

If Nehemiah had lived to see Jesus, I think Jesus would have lovingly, firmly challenged him—just like he challenged the Pharisees when they used Scripture to justify exclusion. Jesus might have said, “Nehemiah, your zeal is real, but your vision is too small. Let me show you what God really wants for the nations.” When it comes to Bible reading, Jesus always gets the last word.

So What Do We Do With Nehemiah?

We do what the Bible itself does. We honor the good in him—his courage, his sacrifice, his dedication. But we also learn from his blind spots and lament an all too common reality – that faithful people can use the Bible for bad behavior.

Nehemiah reminds us that even faithful people can misread Scripture. Even prayerful leaders can cause harm. Even holy intentions can go off track when fear takes the wheel.

The Bible doesn’t hide this from us—because God wants us to grow wiser than the people who came before us.

The Call for God’s People Today

So where does this leave us?

It leaves us with a challenge:
Will we be shaped by fear, or by the Gospel story?

Our story begins with a wandering Aramean.
Our story continues with a God who rescues powerless people.
Our story climaxes with a Savior who embraces the outsider.
Our story ends with a multitude from every tribe, language, and nation worshiping together.

This is who we are. Yet, Nehemiah because of his fear, could only pray for himself. His world shrank and he often prays: God remember me or show mercy to me. That’s what fear does. Notice the last line of the entire book. Friends, we must let our fear go and remember that God is not a “mercy me” God. God is “mercy for all” God.

So instead of fear, let’s choose curiosity.
Instead of suspicion, let’s choose hospitality.
Instead of protecting our little group, let’s open our arms.
Instead of narrowing God’s grace, let’s widen it.
Instead of pointing to isolated verses, let’s read the whole story until our hearts beat in rhythm with God’s. And that always looks and sounds like Jesus.

Because the world does not need a church that repeats Nehemiah’s mistake.
The world needs a church that remembers its own beginnings.
A church that knows what it feels like to be outsiders brought near.
A church that knows that “foreigners” are often the very people through whom God sends blessing.

May we be that church. May we remember our story. And may we welcome others with mercy the way God welcomed us. Amen.