Bible Reading Challenge Blog

The law of Moses was rediscovered.  There are a lot of details in this chapter which bear mentioning.  Notice that Ezra is described as the scribe and Nehemiah as the governor of the land.  We consider them prophets, or people who are proclaiming the Word of the Lord.  Once the law of the Lord is discovered notice how there is a public reading of it.  There are also people strategically placed who can interpret or help the people understand what is being read.  

The reaction to what is being read is one of grief because they recognize that they are not following the law as they ought to follow it.  They recognize that in order to obey God they simply need to be doing things differently, and it makes them grieve because they know that they have let God down.  But the order from Nehemiah is that they not be grieved but rather go home and eat the fat off the land and drink wine and celebrate, because the joy of the Lord is our strength.  I love that song.  Find it below.

As a result of finding the law they also rediscover some of the festivals that they should be celebrating, like the festival of booths.  The festival of booths is that festival that they were celebrating when Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, what we call palm Sunday.  You can read in this chapter why they would have branches available, because they were living in booths made from branches.  So the people of God were redirected in their lives because they were exposed once again to the law of the Lord.  See what happens when you read Scripture and take it seriously?

We now have an accounting,  a genealogical accounting of the people who are populating Jerusalem.  We have nearly 50 thousand people who are in Jerusalem, but no houses yet, according to vs.4.  Not sure how that works since in vs.3 we read about their houses and in the previous verses we find that each person repaired the wall outside of their house.  Anyway, maybe it means that no new houses had been built.  Maybe  it is just an indication that the houses that they were inhabiting were the old ruins of the houses where they had settled once they came into the city.  

The listing of all the families and the number of people with each family is fascinating.  There is a repetition which we find.  We hear again about those who came into Jerusalem but could not prove that they were priests, so they were excluded from performing priestly duties, but that does not mean that they were banned from Jerusalem.  In fact, they are still around.  We also see that the family with the most people is the family of Seenah which had 3,930 (vs.38).  They never show up again and this is the only time that they are mentioned in the Bible so don’t read into it (except for Ezra 2).

You will find a similarity to this chapter and Ezra chapter 2 as well.  We will find in many of the Old Testament books repeats of what has been mentioned with some of the details just a little off.  For example, in Ezra 2 the number of people that we find in the family of Seenah is 3,630.  It isn’t that big of a deal, if you don’t take the stance that either all of it correct or none of it.  I’m okay with a little bit of dissonance.

The wall is finished.  The neighbors aren’t happy.  In fact, their neighbors set up a false meeting with the now governor of Judah, Nehemiah, asking to meet with them so that they can iron out their differences.  Nehemiah understands that this is a plot in order to get him away from Jerusalem and do him harm.  The only thing remaining to do with the walls is to set the gates in their place.  

The story of the traitor in their midst is surprising.  The traitor, Shemaiah, who for some reason was confined to his house, told Nehemiah that he should run into the temple and hide because the neighbors who were looking to kill him, were about to overrun the city.  Nehemiah thought to himself that if his enemies are coming into the city that it would not be a good look to run and hide.  I should probably be on the front line and help defend with everyone else.  He then realized that this traitor was just saying that because it would make him look bad.  

I warned you that the nobles were about to get what was due to them.  So here was the problem, and to our 21st century ears it not only doesn’t make any sense, it sounds barbaric.  What was happening is that the noble families when they had moved back from being in captivity, had taken over the vast majority of the land and then made their own people work for them.  They then gathered the taxes and gathered the crops from their own people.  But it got worse.  They also bought and sold their own people. This was normal for that period of time, but Nehemiah says it is not what the Lord requires or wants.  

He gathers all the people together and tells them that this is not what the Lord would want from them.  The nobles listened and agreed to no longer charge interest, to no longer enslave their own people.  At the end of this chapter Nehemiah also calls attention to what a good person he is.  He had every right to demand the provisions that a governor was due.  But he did not because, he said, that he saw the plight of his people and it was not right that he took the goods from the land while they starved.  He asked the Lord to remember this and remember what a good a person he was.  A little humility might have been more appropriate.  

Things aren’t so easy anymore.  Even though the Israelites had permission of the king, the local leaders were not so happy to see the wall being built.  No one likes a fortified city in their midst.  They began by making fun of the builders, saying just a fox standing on the wall would tear it down.  But then when they saw that the Israelites were determined and continued to build, and it started to take shape, they plotted to stop the work through force.

The Israelites heard about the plot to take them by force and divided up their men where half would work on the walls and half would protect the city.  As a result the enemies of the Israelites decided not to attack because they saw that they were prepared.  What is that statement, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of something.  This is certainly the case in the case here for sure.  Notice the time that they spent to make sure that this was accomplished.  They never changed their clothes because they went from building to defending, always having a sword in their hand to be ready.

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.

It has been a while since I read Nehemiah.  What a great story!  So remember we saw in the last chapter that the prophet Nehemiah was the cup bearer to the king.  Just last chapter he had heard from those who had returned to Jerusalem and they said that while the temple was rebuilt, the walls of Jerusalem were a mess and so they were exposed to any sort of danger that might be around.  This made Nehemiah sad, and the king noticed his sadness as a sadness of “of the heart”.  “What’s wrong?” the king asked Nehemiah, which gave him the open door that he needed to request to return to his beloved homeland to rebuild the walls.

I love the covert mission on which he finds himself.  He is all alone and goes out and inspects the walls, he gets to a point that his animal cannot pass through so he goes out on foot.  When he comes back he declares to the people gathered that it was time to rebuild the walls because they were a mess.  I’m guessing because of the covert nature of the mission that he expected the people to object.  Instead they say: “Let’s start building!” , and as a result they get to work.

Once the foreign locals heard that they were going to get to work in rebuilding the walls they mocked them.  They said that they were rebelling against the king in building this fortified city.  But Nehemiah doesn’t point to the permission that he got from the king but rather to the promise that the Lord would be on his side.  He didn’t need permission, he just needed the assurance of the Lord.

And so just like that we begin our last book that we are going to be seeing in this 90 Day Challenge part IV.  Nehemiah speaks of the prophet who was responsible for rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.  The temple has already been rebuilt and now it is time to build a wall  to protect it.   That falls on Nehemiah and his people who are now fairly well ensconced in the new Jerusalem that has been rebuilt after the Babylonian captivity.  Nehemiah hasn’t made his way over there at the beginning of the book, but he will be soon.

We find at the end of this first chapter that Nehemiah was the cup bearer of the king.  That is quite a position of power for a Hebrew.  He asks about those who actually never were captured and wanted to know what the message was about the homeland.  The message that he gets is sad.  The walls have been torn down, the gates have been broken, so Jerusalem is standing naked without being able to protect itself.  This leads us to believe  that Nehemiah is going to do something about this.  

His first action is to pray to God and ask for forgiveness because he feels that this is a result of the sin of the people of Israel that they have not followed what God asked them to do so He allowed this to happen, if He did not cause it to happen Himself.  So Nehemiah asks for mercy as he meets with the king.  I am sure that he will be approaching the king with a request to go back to Jerusalem and help rebuild the walls.  The story will continue next chapter.  

It is interesting that the first thing that he does is not cast the blame elsewhere and look for someone who might be liable other than those who are directly involved.  That is so different from  today.  When something goes wrong or when we hear bad news we automatically look for someone to blame.  Not Nehemiah, he doesn’t turn the blame on God, like Adam did, but rather directly on the people who were unfaithful, the Jewish people themselves.  It is refreshing to see people take responsibility.

This is nothing less than a purge.  So Ezra calls out all the people of the exiles who have made their way into Jerusalem and the surrounding areas and he demands that they give up their foreign wives and their children by their foreign wives.  A decree was made  that those who did not give up their wives and the children by those wives would be stripped of their property and would be banned from the people of Israel.

Yes, that is  really harsh and there is no excusing this proclamation or this action which left the most vulnerable even more vulnerable.  But do you understand why this was done?  The people of Israel had to have one God and only one God and there could be nothing that got in the way of that God.  The sin was primarily the fact that they had married foreign wives in the first place.  That sin was then compounded by kicking out the defenseless in order to make up for the sin that they had committed.  It is in this instance that we have to see that two wrongs don’t make a right.  But it is what was demanded by Ezra, and honestly, it was what God approved of as well in that instance.

Remember, we do read about God who leads His people into battle and doesn’t allow a living soul to be left unscathed.  This is important to understand.  What we are reading in the Old Testament is not able to be supported today.  We cannot just explain it away, but it is the way in which God acted in that time period.  I think we can look at Jesus and see that in Him we have our way, our truth and our life.  It is only through Jesus that we can get to the Father.  It is through Jesus’ life that we see how we are to live as well, which is very different from what we read in these verses.

A notice  has come out that those who have been given permission to leave Babylon and make their way back to Jerusalem, some of them have intermarried with those who worship other gods.  This mortifies Ezra to the point where he tears his robes and fasts until the evening service.  At this service he approaches the altar of the Lord and asks for forgiveness.

So, what is our current thinking in regards to marrying outside of the faith?  And what do we think in regards to marrying outside of our denominations, or our own Protestant faith communities?  Is  there a litmus test that we should use for our sons and our daughters to see if they are marrying within the faith or not?

Not too long ago I called around looking for a rabbi to do a “mixed marriage” with me.  I didn’t get any positive response.  I got some flack from some people close to me because they felt that it was not right to perform a marriage  as a Christian pastor with someone who did not believe in the same god that we worship.  In the past I have written about the understanding that yes, there is only one God, but that does not mean that we all worship the same god.  This would be a case where those close to me felt, and I agree,  that this marriage is not glorifying to God because we are commanded in passages such as this one in Ezra, not to marry outside of the faith.  The argument goes that I am facilitating that by being a part of the service.

I do understand that argument but I also know that Paul speaks about not being unevenly yoked while at the same time speaks about those couples where one is a believer and one is not, that the believer should stay in that relationship.  I will always counsel against being unequally yoked for if we cannot share the most important thing in our life, our faith in God, then much is missing.