In the next place, Nehemiah appears as governor of the small district of Judah and Benjamin. Famine, the avarice of the rich, and the necessity of providing tribute had brought the humbler classes to the lowest straits. Some had mortgaged their houses, fields and vineyards to buy corn; others had borrowed to pay the taxes, and had sold their children to their richer brethren to repay the debt. Nehemiah was faced with old abuses, and vehemently contrasted the harshness of the nobles with the generosity of the exiles who would redeem their poor countrymen from slavery. He himself had always refrained from exacting the usual provision which other governors had claimed; indeed, he had readily entertained over 150 officials and dependants at his table, apart from casual refugees (Neh. v.). We hear something of a twelve-years' governorship and of a second visit, but the evidence does not enable us to determine the sequence (xiii. 6). Neh. v. is placed in the middle of the building of the walls in fifty-two days; the other reforms during the second visit are closely connected with the dedication of the walls and with the events which immediately follow his first arrival when he had come to rebuild the city. Nehemiah also turns his attention to religious abuses. The sabbath, once a festival, had become more strictly observed, and when he found the busy agriculturists and traders (some of them from Tyre) pursuing their usual labours on that day, he pointed to the disasters which had resulted in the past from such profanation, and immediately took measures to put down the evil (Neh. xiii. 18; cf. Jer. xvii. 20 sqq.; Ezek. xx. 13-24; Isa. lvi. 2, 6; lviii. 13). Moreover, the maintenance of the Temple servants called for supervision; the customary allowances had not been paid to the Levites who had come to Jerusalem after the smaller shrines had been put down, and they had now forsaken the city. His last acts were the most conspicuous of all. Some of the Jews had married women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab, and the impetuous governor indignantly adjured them to desist from a practice which was the historic cause of national sin. Even members of the priestly families had intermarried with Tobiah and Sanballat; the former had his own chamber in the precincts of the Temple, the daughter of the latter was the wife of a son of Joiada the son of the high priest Eliashib. Again Nehemiah's wrath was kindled. Tobiah was cast out, the offending priest expelled, and a general purging followed, in which all the foreign element was removed. With this Nehemiah brings the account of his reforms to a conclusion, and the words "Remember me, O my God, for good" (xiii. 31) are not meaningless. The incidents can be supplemented from Josephus. According to this writer (_Ant._ xi. 7, 2), a certain Manasseh, the brother of Jaddua and grandson of Joiada, refused to divorce his wife, the daughter of Sanballat. For this he was