Nehemiah, as governor of Jerusalem, summons into his presence, and commands to appear before him in his judicial court, every man in Jerusalem who had married a foreign heathen wife.

When all were assembled: 

(1) He contended with them, i.e. he rebuked and argued with them, as he had done with the rulers on the question of Sabbath observance.

(2) He cursed them, or as it is in the margin ‘he reviled them.’  Probably he pronounced, as governor of Jerusalem, speaking in the name of God, the judgments of God on those who broke his law.

(3) He smote certain of them.  That is, he had some of them publicly beaten.  Nehemiah called upon the officers of the court to make an example of some of the principal offenders by inflicting corporal punishment upon them.

(4) He plucked off their hair, lit., He made them bald.  The Hebrew word, marat, which is used here, means to make smooth, to polish, to peel.  The word hair is not expressed in the original.

We are surely not to suppose that Nehemiah, with his own hands, either struck these men or made them bald.  What he did was simply this.  He, as the head magistrate, inflicted a judicial punishment upon them, a double punishment.

(1) They were beaten.

(2) They were made bald.

We read (Matt, xxvii. 26) that Pontius Pilate took our Lord and scourged him; but we surely do not imagine that the Roman governor with his own hands inflicted the scourging, but we understand it to mean that he gave the order for the punishment to the Roman soldiers.  Just so, Nehemiah the governor commanded these offending Jews to be beaten and made bald by the officers of the court.

One of the most flourishing trades in an Eastern city is the trade of the barber.  This may easily be seen by walking through the streets of an Eastern town, and noting the numerous barbers at work, some in their shops, which are open to the street, and others outside on the doorsteps, or in some shady corner.  Especially in the evening are these numerous barbers busy; when the work of the rest of the city is drawing to a close the barber’s work is at its height.  Yet, strange to say, although the barber is so busy, everyone in the East wears a beard; a man in the East would think it a terrible disgrace if he was obliged to be shorn of his beard.

The beard is considered a very sacred thing; it is thought a great insult even to touch a man’s beard, and if you want to make any man an object of scorn and ridicule, you cannot do so better than by shaving off his beard.  This was the way in which the Ammonites insulted David’s ambassadors (2 Sam. x. 4, 5).  And we read that they stopped at Jericho till their beards were grown, for ‘the men were greatly ashamed.’