Today, I am reading and commenting on Nehemiah 7-8.

The first thing I want to comment on about this passage is the genealogical record from which the writer quotes.  It struck me that this resembles the list from Ezra 2 of those who returned to Jerusalem and Judah.  In fact, this almost looks like it was taken from Ezra 2.  However, when I started looking closely at it, I noticed that some of the numbers of men varied between here and Ezra 2.  Which led me to look at the phrasing which the author here used to introduce this genealogy.  He wrote “I found the genealogical record of those who had been the first to return. This is what I found written there.”  The passage then seems to quote from another source from which it continues into the list of numbers of men.  While what is written could have been taken from Ezra and some numbers incorrectly transcribed, I do not think that is what happened.  Rather, it seems to me likely that the second chapter of Ezra and the seventh chapter of Nehemiah were both transcribed from a third document which has since been lost.  It doesn’t seem reasonable that the writer of the Book of Nehemiah would have copied this list from the Book of Ezra, nor that the writer of the Book of Ezra would have copied it from the Book of Nehemiah.  It seems to me that if they were aware of the others work when they were composing their record they would not have copied this information.  Instead, I believe that both writers were aware of a third source which was starting to deteriorate which they copied this from in order to preserve this list.   I suspect that the difference between these two lists results from one or more copies of the original record which were in such a state that the men copying them had to make a judgement call as to what the numbers were in some of the cases.

I usually prefer to write about the things we learn from the passage about how we should live our lives, but sometimes, such as today,  I feel that there is value in looking at what we can learn about interpreting the process behind these writings.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.