“Beat some of these men and pulled out their hair”
I rebuked them and called down curses on them. I beat some of these men and pulled out their hair. (Nehemiah 13:25 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Nehemiah losing his temper and getting violent.
The cultural key
This reads today like an official simply flying into a rage. The specific act, pulling out the men's hair, carried recognized meaning. In a culture where the hair and beard were bound up with a man's honor and dignity, seizing and tearing them out was one of the most degrading public punishments imaginable, a deliberate assault on his standing (Isaiah pictures the servant giving 'my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard,' Isaiah 50:6). Nehemiah is not merely angry; he is publicly shaming men who had married foreign wives and whose children could not even speak the language of Judah, forcing them into humiliated compliance. The gesture is the mirror image of Ezra's: Ezra pulled out his own hair in grief and shame over the same sin (Ezra 9:3), while Nehemiah pulls out the offenders' hair to shame them into repentance.
Recovered meaning
Nehemiah pulling out the offenders' hair is a deliberate act of public humiliation, not just temper. Tearing a man's hair and beard shamed his honor; it is the inflicted counterpart to Ezra tearing out his own hair in grief over the same sin.