Nehemiah 10:29

To walk in God's law, etc.] The enactments of the Law which they more particularly undertook to carry out were those directing (a) abstention from marriage with aliens, (b) the observance of the sabbath and sabbatical year, (c) the provision of supplies for the Temple and its ministers. These enactments gained in importance from the circumstances of the times, for there was a persistent tendency on the part of many of the people both to form alliances with their heathen neighbours and to be indifferent to the external ordinances of religion (see Ezra 9 Nehemiah 13). It was to counteract these evils that prominence was given to those regulations which were calculated to preserve the separateness of the Jewish race, and to accentuate the sacredness of their religious institutions. The stress thus laid upon the ceremonial law was not due to any relapse from the spiritual faith of the prophets to the more material and mechanical ideas of primitive times, but was intended to impress upon the people a sense of the transcendent sanctity of the God with whom they enjoyed such privileged relations.