Nehemiah 13:29
Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites.
Remember them, O my God, is Nehemiah's prayer asking God to remember those who had defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites. One defilement in view was the high priest Eliashib forming by intermarriage a friendship and unhallowed alliance with Tobiah the Ammonite, Israel's bitter enemy. He cast the tithes and offerings out of the temple storeroom to give Tobiah an apartment connected with the temple, contaminating the very precincts of the temple and showing contempt for God by favoring a representative of a race forever shut out from the congregation. The defilement also included those in sacred office marrying heathen wives and entering unlawful alliances with idolaters and refusing to separate from them.
Rank or position gave no exemption, so priests or rulers who pleaded to keep their heathen wives and would not sever the connection were immediately separated from the service of the Lord. The grandson of the high priest who had married Sanballat's daughter was removed from office and banished from Israel. The verse belongs to the account of cleansing the priesthood and restoring the duties of the priests and Levites. Nehemiah's prompt answer in sore grief to Tobiah's bold profanation was to cast out all Tobiah's household stuff, cleanse the chambers, and restore the vessels of the house of God with the meat offering and the frankincense. Carrying through this severe enforcement amid constant struggle with opposing elements cost anguish of soul and was accomplished only by fasting, humiliation, and prayer.