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

After Jerusalem’s wall had been rebuilt and dedicated, Nehemiah returned to the court of Artaxerxes, as he had promised when he first proposed going to rebuild Jerusalem.  Then after a period of time he went back to Jerusalem to discover that the Jews in Jerusalem had neglected maintenance of the temple in his absence and allowed nonbelievers to use the temple for commerce.  As Nehemiah looked around he saw that they had stopped being faithful to God in many other ways.  As I read this passage, Nehemiah realized that their failure to keep the Sabbath holy played a central role in their falling away from God.  In much the same way, I suspect that the failure of Christians in the United States to keep Sunday as a holy Sabbath contributed to their inability to take a stand against other sins.  The first step in bringing people back to God is for those who seek to faithfully serve Him to set one day a week aside purely for maintaining their relationship with 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 9-10.

In yesterday’s passage, when the Jews gathered in Jerusalem to hear the Book of the Law of Moses read after rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls, they responded to hearing God’s commands by weeping.  The leaders convinced them to put off their mourning because that gathering was one of celebration.  So, they gathered a second time to once more hear the Book of the Law and mourn their sins.  That right there contains a lesson for us, but is not what I want to write about today.  When they gathered the second time it was to confess their sins and renew their covenant with God.   However, before I get into my main point for today I want to touch on how this gathering also emphasizes my point from yesterday’s entry.  The version of the covenant this group entered into with God specified that all those who had separated themselves from the neighboring peoples along with their wives, and their sons and daughters who were old enough to understand were agreeing to this new covenant.  That is, this renewed covenant was being entered into by men and their wives on an equal footing.

As part of that renewed covenant they recounted the many wonderful things which God had done for their ancestors, and the ways in which their ancestors had turned from God.  We can learn from this that our human nature leads us to turn away from God when times are good,  which leads to suffering and hard times.  Yet, when we do fall on hard times and cry out to God, He will come to our rescue time and again.  I especially want to draw your attention to the characteristics of God which they describe here.

• God gives life to everything
• God gave us regulations and laws which are just and right, and good
• God is forgiving
• God is gracious
• God is compassionate
• God is merciful

The first two are important reminders for us and the other four are characteristics we should seek to emulate.

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.

I am not quite sure where I am going with what I am going to write today.  So, I am just going to write about a few things which struck me and see if they flow together into a theme.  I will start by noting that Ezra was a contemporary of Nehemiah.  While Ezra arrived in Jerusalem before Nehemiah, it seems clear to me that the two of them being in Jerusalem at the same time was critical to both of their successes.

The description in this passage of what happened when Ezra read the Book of the Law of Moses to the assembled people contains many things which can be useful lessons for us.  However, today I want to take note of something which I never particularly noticed before.  When the passage tells us who was there for the reading, it says that the assembly was made up of “men, women, and others who could understand.”  This struck me because the “others who could understand” appears to refer to children who were old enough to understand God’s Law.  However, as I began to write that down, I realized that the first part of this was just as important.  The people who had come together as one to hear the words of God’s Law were men and women on equal footing.  There was no expectation that men only needed, or were able, to learn what God commanded.  No, hearing, learning, and understanding what God wants us to do is for men, women, and children who are old enough to understand, with no difference in their responsibility to listen and act.  This passage runs counter to the claim that the Bible is misogynistic and that it presents women as less able to understand God’s Laws.  In fact, this passage presents men and women as being equally able to understand God’s Law.

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.

Before I get into my study of today’s passage I want to make note of something I only really became aware of after I started writing these blogs:  Nehemiah did not come to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls which had been destroyed during the Babylonian conquest which immediately preceded the Exile.  Rather, he was rebuilding the walls which had originally been built by those who first returned under Cyrus.   So, when Nehemiah got the Jew started rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, their enemies, Sanballat and Tobiah the Ammonite, ridiculed them for even trying to rebuild the walls.  As we read on we realize that part of the reason Sanballat and Tobiah thought the rebuilding effort was a joke was because previous governors of Jerusalem(I am unsure what the correct title was for Nehemiah and his predecessors) were corrupt.    In fact, we even see that a significant number of the Jewish leaders with whom Nehemiah had to work were corrupt, or on the side of Tobiah and Sanballat for other reasons.  n any case, Nehemiah encouraged the workers who were building the wall and they continued to work hard at it.  This led Tobiah and Sanballat to plot, or perhaps, just plant the rumor that they were plotting, to attack the builders when and where they were unprepared.  Nehemiah met this threat by making sure the men who had come with him could be clearly seen to be prepared to repel attackers, and got the rest of those working on the wall to do likewise.

In the middle of today’s passage, which is mostly about the attempts to prevent the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls and how Nehemiah countered those attempts, we have a bit where Nehemiah learns that the elites of Jerusalem, including himself, were oppressing their fellow Jews who were poor.  Initially, it seems like a separate issue from Nehemiah’s efforts to get Jerusalem rebuilt and functioning.  However, I realized today that this bit in the middle explains why Nehemiah was successful in building the walls while his predecessors had left them in ruins.  When Nehemiah realized that he was getting rich off of the misfortune of others, he immediately changed his business practices and convinced the others who were doing likewise to follow his example.  By behaving in this manner, Nehemiah showed the people that rebuilding the walls was not a vanity project for Nehemiah.  He wanted to rebuild the walls because he cared about the protection this would offer the people who could not afford armed guards.  Nehemiah pushed rebuilding the walls because he believed it was in everyone’s best interest to do so.  Which led those who liked things the way they were, because they profited from the vulnerability of others, to attempt to assassinate Nehemiah, or failing that to make him look like he put his interests ahead of those of everyone else.  Despite having been appointed by the king of Persia to govern Jerusalem, and being the leader who could inspire the people to restore it to being a major city, Nehemiah refused to act like he thought he was more important than anyone else.  We should seek  to follow Nehemiah’s example…and its flip side, we should refuse to view ourselves as less important than anyone else.

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.

Today has a follow-up theme to yesterday’s.  When Nehemiah received news about the state of things in Jerusalem, he sat down and wept.  Once he had wept for a short time, he began to fast and pray.  After fasting and praying before God for “some days”, Nehemiah went before the king of Persia, Artaxerxes, with a plan.  Interestingly, he does not tell us he had a plan, but we can tell that he had one because he was able to answer Artaxerxes when the latter asked him when he would return.  Further, once Nehemiah knew that Artaxerxes looked favorably on his mission, he had a list of things he requested of Artaxerxes.  So, when Nehemiah prayed to God asking God to fix the terrible situation in Jerusalem, he did not just petition God, he listened to God speaking to him and followed the plans he heard God giving him.  We see more of the way Nehemiah combined prayer, faith, and thought from his account of what he did when he got to Jerusalem.  When he got there, he did not tell the people there the purpose of his coming to Jerusalem until he had time to assess the situation.  First, Nehemiah went out and inspected the walls so that he would have an idea of what the project would entail before he began talking to the leaders who had been here all along.  So, likewise, we should not just pray about the problems which God places upon our hearts.  We should pray, and sometimes fast, and listen to God telling us what actions He wants us to take.  Then, while still praying and fasting (if fasting is called for), we should begin planning how we can carry out what God has laid on our hearts to do, listening to God’s prompting the entire time.

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

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

Nehemiah left Jerusalem and later returned.  Upon his return he discovered that the Israelites had neglected the Temple, failed to continue to provide support so that the Levites could spend fulltime ministering to God, started to do business on the Sabbath, and married women from among the people’s around them who did not worship God (and who had not given up their idolatry).  All of these things were a violation of the covenant they had entered into upon completing the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.  The covenant they were violating was not the one that their ancestors had entered into at Mount Sinai, even though it was a reaffirmation of that covenant.  This was something to which they themselves had agreed.  This passage should serve to remind us of how easy it is for us to fall away from following God’s commands when the spiritual high is over.

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 wrote yesterday that when the people in rebuilt Jerusalem heard the Book of God’s Law  read to them they grieved, but their leaders instructed them to put aside their grief because they had assembled to celebrate God’s mercy.  They followed their leaders’ advice, but in today’s passage we are told that two weeks after that festival they assembled once more, this time to express their grief over their sins.  This time they fasted and prayed, and once more listened to the Book of the Law being read to them.   Then they listened to a litany of how their ancestors had cried out to the Lord when in distress, been rescued by Him, only to turn back to their sins as soon as the crisis had passed.  Once more they, as a people, were in  a situation of crisis and were turning to the Lord.  Are we too willing to admit that we cry out to the Lord when in trouble, only to return to our sins when the crisis has passed?  Are we willing, as these people were, to strive to make a break with out past and commit to following the Lord when the good times return?

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.

Once the walls had been restored, Nehemiah realized that relatively few people lived in Jerusalem.  In order to decide how to remedy this, Nehemiah had the people assemble in Jerusalem to register them according to their genealogies.  Actually, it seems to me that he got the idea of doing so after he discovered the genealogical records of the first group to return from Exile.  When the people assembled they had Ezra read and explain the Law of Moses to them (the wording of this passage allows one to think that the assembly for reading the Law was a different assembly than the one Nehemiah called to register people by their genealogy, but I think that is an artifact of translation).  As the people heard the Law being read, they became grief stricken.  The passage does not tell us why this happened, but I suspect their reaction was similar to that of King Josiah when he heard the Book of the Law read: they realized how badly they had fallen short of keeping God’s commands.  Nehemiah, Ezra, and the rest of those who had been familiar with the Law before this encouraged the people not to feel grief, this assembly was one to celebrate God’s goodness.  When we truly understand how we have failed to live according to God’s desire for us we will feel grief.  There are times when we should put aside such grief and celebrate God’s goodness.

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.

I was going to write a completely different blog today than what I am writing now, but I found myself getting down into the weeds of the passage, writing about things you can read for yourself.  Then it struck me that the reason we read this book is because Nehemiah refused to back down.  When the people working on the wall were beginning to get overwhelmed by the effort, were beginning to feel that they weren’t getting anywhere with the project, Nehemiah stood up and laid out a plan.  And he did not just give them a plan, he put his back into the plan and worked alongside of them.  When people complained to Nehemiah about the rich oppressing them, he did not point the finger at other people and say that they needed to change their ways.  No, when he asked the rich to do more to help the poor, he asked them to follow his example, and he did more than he asked anyone else to do.  When he was personally threatened, he refused to take a defensive position not available to the common people because he was more important to the cause then anyone else.  He was, but he refused to let that justify giving himself special privileges.

I have written all of the above, and I think it is a pretty fair reading of the passage, but it fails to capture the thoughts behind it.  I have respect for how Nehemiah behaved as a leader of the people, but I cannot quite get it put into words.

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

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

I know what I want to write about from today’s passage, but I am not sure I am going to be able to make the point I felt as I read it.  The way the passage is phrased I am not quite sure what happened when here.  However, it looks like between the time Nehemiah returned to the king of Persia and when he once more was in Jerusalem the Returned Exiles became lax in their adherence to God’s Law.  Some of them began to intermarry with the people of the land and others began to follow the local example of doing business on the Sabbath.  Some went so far as to allow those who did worshiped other gods to do business out of the Temple.  The reaction when Nehemiah came back to Jerusalem and put his foot down about these practices shows us that the majority objected to these actions, but lacked the authority to do anything about it. We need to not be afraid to live faithfully, even if it appears that no one else around us is.  Also, we should not be afraid to step up and call people back to being faithful to God if we feel He is leading us to do so, perhaps there are more people who share our understanding of how the people of God should live than we realize.

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