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

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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.

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

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 was tempted to just copy and paste what I wrote on this passage last year because I really like what I wrote last year.  After I read the passage I decided to not to do that.  When the people answerable to Nehemiah gathered  on the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the scribe read from the Book of the Law.  As I understand the passage, Ezra read a passage from the Law and several Levites stood at various points repeating what Ezra had just read so that those further away could understand what he said.  Then before Ezra read the next part, he explained what he had just read.  They continued this until Ezra completed the reading of the Law.  The passage tells us that the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.  This reminds me of the way Josiah reacted when the Book of the Law was read to him. That suggests to me that the people in this account felt that they and their forebears had sinned because they had not properly kept the Law of God up until now.  However, Nehemiah and Ezra, and the others who were teaching the people, told them not to  mourn because the day was a day for feasting and rejoicing to praise God.  The people listened to those instructions and put aside their grief for their sins.  They feasted on what they had brought for feasting and shared with those who had not adequately prepared for the feast.

On the second day of the month, the leaders of the people gathered with Ezra in order to do a more detailed study of the Law.  I am not sure if this gathering on the second day was pre-planned or if it was a response to what the people heard on the first day.  In either case, it was a good idea.  The leaders of the people discussed the implications of the Law and came up with a plan for how they should study the Book of the Law.  Then for the rest of the seven days of the festival, Ezra read from the Book of the Law each day.  There was value in them hearing the same thing day after day.  In the same way, there is value for us in reading God’s word each day.  This passage encourages me in re-reading the Bible each year, with a Bible passage for each day.  I want to encourage you to do the same.  I want to encourage you to read it, but if that is too much you can listen to my recording of the passage, or someone else reading passages.  And don’t just listen to someone reading passages you like.  Find an audiobook or video series which reads through the Bible in a year.  I have learned a lot by doing these blogs, and since I have been doing the video recording of reading the passages it has opened up even more to me.

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 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

I want to start with something Nehemiah wrote in chapter five verse seventeen. “Moreover, there were at my table 150 men, Jews and officials, besides those who came to us from the nations that were around us.”  I am touching on this because I think it gives insight into the relationship between the returned exiles (whom Nehemiah refers to as “Jews”) and the nations around them.  I think that this here goes along with the Ezra 6:21 where we are told that the people of the land who separated themselves from unclean practices were allowed to eat of the Passover lamb.  Here Nehemiah accepted at his table to eat with him those who came to them from the nations around them.  These were some of those who had left the practices of the peoples of the land and joined with the practices of the Jews.  I am mentioning this because I think it provides context to later passages in Nehemiah which could be read as looking down on the peoples of the land for being the peoples of the land, when this, and the passage from Ezra chapter six, suggest that the separation was about the actions of the people who were rejected, not who they were by birth.

Having written that I want to go back and look at why Nehemiah’s defenses worked.  I have always wondered why Nehemiah’s defenses worked in the face of overwhelming odds.  It struck me today that all along I have missed something.  Nehemiah’s enemies, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem, knew that Nehemiah had the support of Artaxerxes.  So their plan was to sabotage the wall, and kill some of the workers, then escape without being identified.  Nehemiah’s defensive plans meant that they could not accomplish that final piece of the plan.  Their planned attack would have been interpreted by Artaxerxes as rebellion against him.  If it could be tracked back to them, Artaxerxes would have sent his army against them.  Nehemiah’s enemies had sufficient strength to defeat Nehemiah, but not sufficient to stand against the king of Persia.  There are more lessons here than this, but it teaches us an important lesson.  We do not need to be able to withstand opposition.  God just calls us to stand up against it to do His will.  This passage shows us how standing up for what is right can succeed even when we lack the strength to stop our opposition.

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.

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 don’t remember if I pointed this out last year, but I think it is important to bring up as part of setting the stage.  For a long time I assumed that the broken down walls and burnt gates were leftover from the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem.  More recently I have come to understand that the walls of Jerusalem had been rebuilt to at least some extent since the exiles returned to Jerusalem and then been destroyed again.  So when Hanani told Nehemiah that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and the gates burned, it was news that indicated a change of state from what Nehemiah had known about Jerusalem.  Nehemiah’s reaction to this news was to begin praying.  Nehemiah’s prayer seemed to contain three parts.  First, he acknowledged that God was just in causing suffering for the descendants of Jacob.  Second, he declared an intent to turn back to God.  Third, he requested that God give him aid and direction in fixing the problem.

However, in addition to praying, Nehemiah planned.  When he appeared before Artaxerxes, he was prepared to answer the questions which the king asked of him.  Not only did he have answers to the king’s questions, he was prepared with additional requests when it became obvious that his initial request met with the king’s support.  Nehemiah did not just pray for God to take care of things.  He prayed to God but also made plans to address the problems of which he was aware.   We should follow this model: pray and plan.

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.

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.