Nehemiah 10:28-30 And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinims… Wherever I find a purely savage life, which means life eaten up by impure sin, there I also find no capacity in the life to advance and grow. You have an instance in the case of Africa, the life of which has not moved for a couple of thousand years, simply because it is soaked with impurity. Turning to the earliest efforts of civilisation, as recorded in the Bible, I find men making effort after effort, getting a little way, and then each effort vanishing in a sink of impure sin. Life ought to grow if natural, but if impurity is natural, it is natural to stagnate, never to grow, to fall to pieces, and for civilisations to be swept out by weakness and impotence. The history of our European civilisation is the history of the gradual rise in the idea of marriage and purity. (Canon Scott-Holland.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the porters, the singers, the Nethinims, and all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands unto the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, every one having knowledge, and having understanding; |
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