Today, I am reading and commenting on Nehemiah 11-13.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

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I wrote about this last year, but I want to mention it to start my blog today.  The timeline in chapter thirteen is confusing.  However, most of it seems to be about events which happened during Nehemiah’s second stint as governor of Jerusalem and Judah.  When Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem after spending some time in the court of Artaxerxes, he found a lot of things had gone wrong in his absence.  The passage seems to suggest that the root of the problem was the actions of the men who made alliances with those who were opponents of the returned exiles by marrying their daughters (and probably giving their daughters in marriage to them).  It mentions that the high priest was related to Tobiah and that his son had married a daughter of Sanballat.  Tobiah and Sanballat had conspired to prevent the Jews from rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem.  The passage also mentions that other men had married women of the region.  Further it tells us that they allowed many of their children to be raised in the pagan culture of their wives.  Overall it reminds me of what Paul says in 2 Corinthians about being unequally yoked with an unbeliever.  These marriages were business and political alliances with power players of the region.  The reason they were a problem was because the men who entered into them put their economic and political fortunes ahead of being faithful to God.  Nehemiah warns them and us that if we enter into such alliances, especially through marriage, our partners will lead us into sin.  We must be careful not to put anything above God.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Nehemiah 9-10.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Also, here is the link for my Patreon page

In yesterday’s passage I discussed how the people were grief stricken when they heard the Book of the Law and realized the extent to which they and their forebearers had betrayed God.  However, they were told not to grieve because they were gathered for a holy festival to rejoice and praise God.  They did as instructed, but did not forget their grief.  On the twenty-fourth day of the month they re-assembled to express their grief and confess their sins.  That is described in today’s passage.  We need to understand that their is a time to rejoice in God and a time to mourn for our failure to be faithful.  When it is time to rejoice let us rejoice.  When it is time to confess our sins and mourn our failures, let us do so.

Their leaders prayed and itemized the failures which these people and their ancestors had done before God.  They acknowledged that those sins had led to their current position of suffering and that God was just to bring that suffering upon them.  However, they did not stop there.  They developed a plan of action about what they would do going forward and committed themselves to following that plan.  They committed themselves to do God’s will going forward and to worship God with their entire being.  Let us seek to do likewise.

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