Nehemiah 13:15

Nehemiah's vindication of the Sabbath

15. Jewish Labour on the Sabbath.

saw I in Judah i.e. while Nehemiah was residing in the country.

treading wine presses For the phrase cf. Isaiah 63:2; Lamentations 1:15.

The word here used for -winepress" (gath) is different from that used e.g. in Isaiah 5:2; Joel 2:24; Joel 3:13 (yeqeb). The -winepress" or gathis the place in which the grapes are trodden; the -winefat" or yeqebis the receptacle into which the juice is made to flow from the winepress.

sheaves R.V. marg. -Or, heaps of corn". The time of treading the grapes would be later than that of carrying the corn. Perhaps the corn was being brought in on asses from the country to be threshed in the city: or sheaves of straw are intended.

lading asses R.V. adds therewith.

on the sabbath day The observance of the Sabbath was always the stumbling-block in the way of free relations between the pious Jew and the Gentile. The temptation to desecrate the Sabbath in order to maintain amicable relations with Gentile traders was a constant source of religious degeneracy among the Jews. Hence the strictness with which its observance was inculcated during the Exile, Isaiah 56:2; Isaiah 58:13; Jeremiah 17:21; Ezekiel 20:16; Ezekiel 22:26.

in the day wherein they sold victuals It appears that the wares having been brought into the city on the Sabbath, Nehemiah raised his protest on the next or some following day, when they were being sold.

It can hardly mean that they were sold on the Sabbath; for in that case Nehemiah would have laid the chief emphasis on a Sabbath traffic, as in the next verse, rather than on the act of conveyance.