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.