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

The chronology of the beginning of chapter thirteen is confusing.  Chapter twelve ends talking about how the people of Jerusalem put specific people in charge of the temple store rooms and in charge of distributing portions of the offerings to Levites and priests so that they could dedicate themselves to carrying out their duties to minister to the people of God.  The context suggests this happened on the same day that the people celebrated the completion of rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem.  However, a more careful reading leads one to conclude that this happened in the days following that celebration.  Chapter thirteen begins by saying “On that day…”, which encourages one to read the end of chapter twelve as happening on the day the completion of the wall was celebrated.  However, verse 4, combined with verse 6, of chapter thirteen, reveal that this happened after Nehemiah had gone back to the capital of Persia and then returned once more to Jerusalem.  I am going into this because it is a perfect example of the way in which writers of the Bible often do not share our concept of the proper way to record the chronology of events.

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.

In yesterday’s passage it told us that the people began to weep as they listened to the Law of the Lord and had it explained to them.  The leaders told them not to mourn because they were gathered for a celebration to praise God, that they would gather later for repentance.  Today’s passage records their gathering for that day of mourning and repentance.  The people acknowledged the many good things which God had done for their ancestors and themselves and confessed that their ancestors and themselves had not been faithful to their side of the covenant which God had made with them.  Yet, despite implicitly acknowledging that they ancestors had repeatedly turned to God when times were bad, only to turn away again after God had rescued them, they renewed the covenant which God had made with their ancestors.  They acknowledged that God had been faithful, while they had acted wickedly.  They did not enter into the new vow in order to be rescued from the situation in which they found themselves.  Rather, they entered into a vow to be faithful to God in recognition that their current situation, as bad as it was, was an example of God being more faithful to them than they deserved.  They chose to follow the example of Joash, the last good king of Judah, who strove to be faithful to God, even though God had told him that nothing would stop the destruction which God was bringing to Judah.  In the same way, the people in today’s passage did not vow to be faithful to God in order to gain God’s favor, rather they vowed to be faithful to God because they recognized that they should be faithful to 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 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.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Nehemiah 4-6.

Today’s passage describes multiple obstacles which arose to the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls.  Most of them were attempts by those who benefited from Jerusalem’s lack of walls.  They threatened and otherwise tried to discourage those who were building the walls.  Nehemiah encouraged the builders to pray and trust God, while also working with them on a plan to address the threats.  The next obstacle recorded here resulted from the greed of the powerful and wealthy which divided the people when they needed to be united.  Nehemiah once again provided an answer by being an example, recognizing the way that his own actions contributed to the problem and reversing them.  Finally, the external enemies tried to distract Nehemiah.  Nehemiah refused to allow them to distract him, and refused to give into fear when they threatened him.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 1-3.

The first thing I want to point out is that the state of Jerusalem which Nehemiah’s brother described to him was not because of the Babylonians sacking Jerusalem back in Jeremiah’s time when they took the Jews into Exile.  No, the wall of Jerusalem had been broken down and the gates burned after the returned Exiles had initially rebuilt them.*  So, when Nehemiah confessed the sins of “we, the Israelites,” he was not talking about the sins which led to the Israelites being exiled in the first place, at least, not primarily.  Rather, Nehemiah was referring to the sins which he and his fellow descendants of Jacob had committed since Cyrus issued an edict allowing them to return to Jerusalem and ordering them to rebuild the temple.  Which brings me to something which occurred to me for the first time today: when Nehemiah went before Artaxerxes and requested permission to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall and gates, rebuilding the wall was not his primary agenda.  Rather, rebuilding the wall and gates of Jerusalem was a means to calling the Jews living in Jerusalem and Judah to return to being faithful to God.  And, as I write that I realized it tells us something about the way that God works.  Both Ezra and Nehemiah were called by God to go to Jerusalem and lead the people to more faithfully follow Him.  They were each called within a few years of each other and they were called independently of each other.  Yet, they worked together to bring the Jewish people to faithfully serve God.

*I make this point because for many years I just assumed that when this passage says that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and the gates burned that it referred to them still being unrepaired from when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, when they had been rebuilt and destroyed yet again.  Additionally, many of the commentaries on Nehemiah hold the position that the wall and the gates remained destroyed from the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem.  I think they are mistaken.

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