A separation like that made by Ezra, some 20 years previously Ezra 10:15-44, seems to be intended. The pagan wives were divorced and sent back, with their offspring, to their own countries.

They separated from Israel all the mixed multitude - They excluded all strange women, and all persons, young and old, who had been born of these illegal connections.

Now it came to pass, when they had heard the law,.... Or the law concerning the Ammonite and the Moabite, and which included other nations also, and forbad marriage with them:

that they separated from Israel all the mixed multitude; all of these, and other nations, they had contracted affinity with.

This law being understood, all strangers were separated from Israel. ערב is taken from Exodus 12:38, where it denotes the mixed multitude of non-Israelitish people who followed the Israelites at their departure from Egypt. The word is here transferred to strangers of different heathen nationalities living among the Israelites. The date of the occurrence here related cannot be more precisely defined from the ההוּא בּיּום. Public readings of the law frequently took place in those days, as is obvious from Nehemiah 8 and 9, where we learn that in the seventh month the book of the law was publicly read, not only on the first and second days, but also daily during the feast of tabernacles, and again on the day of prayer and fasting on the twenty-fourth of the month. It appears, however, from מזּה לפני, Nehemiah 13:4, compared with Nehemiah 13:6, that the reading Nehemiah 13:1-3 took place in the interval between Nehemiah's first and second stay at Jerusalem. This view is not opposed by the facts mentioned Nehemiah 13:4. and 23f. The separation of the ערב could not be carried out at once; and hence, notwithstanding repeated resolutions to sever themselves from strangers (Nehemiah 9:2; Nehemiah 10:31), cases to the contrary might be discovered, and make fresh separations needful.

Now it came to pass, when they had heard the law, that they separated from Israel {a} all the mixed multitude.

(a) That is, all who had joined in unlawful marriage and also those with whom God had forbidden them to mingle with.

13:3 Multitude - All the heathenish people with whom they had contracted alliance.

13:1-9 Israel was a peculiar people, and not to mingle with the nations. See the benefit of publicly reading the word of God; when it is duly attended to, it discovers to us sin and duty, good and evil, and shows wherein we have erred. We profit, when we are thus wrought upon to separate from evil. Those that would drive sin out of their hearts, the living temples, must throw out its household stuff, and all the provision made for it; and take away all the things that are the food and fuel of lust; this is really to mortify it. When sin is cast out of the heart by repentance, let the blood of Christ be applied to it by faith, then let it be furnished with the graces of God's Spirit, for every good work.