July 3, 2018: Day 80 – Nehemiah 3

The repairs to the wall is laid out in detail in this chapter.  If you notice it is not just the Israelite’s who are doing the work, but also some of the people in the surrounding area who were involved in pagan worship.  One of the truths that we find in this fact is that there have always been people living in Jerusalem who have not been from the Israelite tribes.  To this day we find two different Christian groups, Muslims, and Jews living in Jerusalem and each claiming Jerusalem as their own and as their capital.  This is why moving our embassy to Jerusalem is such a bad idea.  It validates the claim that Jerusalem is only the property of the Jewish people.  This simply has never been the case.  

There is one line which is somewhat bothersome.  Look at vs.5 and we read that the nobles did not put their shoulders to the work.  We find a vast majority of those who are doing the work are actually from the priestly class.  Maybe that is why I enjoy doing small repair work around the church, I can and there is a historical biblical precedent to it.  That might be a bit of a stretch, but I’ll take it.  But this implies that if you were in a certain class that you were exempt from the work.  This might come back to bite them in the future.  Remember once the people on the Mayflower landed the rule was if you don’t work you don’t eat.  Not a bad rule at all.

Slowly but surely the wall is being rebuilt with each person doing their share.  Did you notice that the vast majority of the repair work is being done by those who have homes right in front of the section that they themselves have agreed to repair?  It would have been more difficult to get people to do general repairs to the entire wall.  This was a smart strategy for each person to do the work closest to their home because that would be the area that they would want to have protected the most.  They would be the most invested in making sure that the area in front of their home was done well.