20 The merchants and sellers of various kinds of merchandise spent the night once or twice outside Jerusalem,
21 but then I warned them: “Why do you spend the night alongside the wall? If you keep this up, I will beat you!” From that time on, they did not return on the sabbath.
22 Then I ordered the Levites to purify themselves and to watch the gates, so that the sabbath day might be kept holy. This, too, remember in my favor, my God, and have mercy on me in accordance with your great mercy!
23 Also in those days I saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, or Moab.
24 Of their children, half spoke the language of Ashdod, or of one of the other peoples, and none of them knew how to speak the language of Judah.
25 So I reprimanded and cursed them; I beat some of their men and pulled out their hair; and I adjured them by God: “You shall not marry your daughters to their sons nor accept any of their daughters for your sons or for yourselves!
26 Did not Solomon, the king of Israel, sin because of them? Though among the many nations there was no king like him, and though he was beloved of his God and God had made him king over all Israel, yet even he was led into sin by foreign women.