It is not easy to settle the time of the incident mentioned in chapter xiii. 1-3. The phrase "on that day" with which the passage opens seems to point back to the previous chapter. If so it cannot be taken literally, because what it describes must be assigned to a later period than the contents of the paragraph that follows it. It forms an introduction to the extract from Nehemiah's memoirs, and its chronological position is even later than the date of the first part of the extract, because that begins with the words "And before this,"[254] _i.e._, before the incident that opens the chapter. Now it is clear that Nehemiah's narrative here refers to a time considerably after the transactions of the previous chapter, inasmuch as he states that when the first of the occurrences he now records happened he was away in the court of Artaxerxes.[255] Still later, then, must that event be placed _before_ which this new incident occurred. We might perhaps suppose that the phrase "at that day" is carried over directly from the chronicler's original source and belongs to its antecedents in that document; but so clumsy a piece of joinery is scarcely admissible. It is better to take the phrase quite generally. Whatever it meant when first penned, it is clear that the events it introduces belong only indefinitely to the times previously mentioned. We are really landed by them in a new state of affairs. Here we must notice that the introductory passage is immediately connected with the Nehemiah record. It tells how the law from Deuteronomy requiring the exclusion of the Ammonite and the Moabite was read and acted on. This is to be remembered when we are studying the subsequent events. [254] Neh. xiii. 4. [255] Neh. xiii. 6.