Bible Commentary - Nehemiah 3

In this chapter, the people work together to rebuild the wall.

This entire chapter is a list of all the different families and clans that contribute to rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem.  In this way, Nehemiah shows that he has the same scribal predilection for lists and censuses that fill many other parts of the bible.

This chapter does not have much in the way of story, so my commentary will be relatively brief.

Verse 1 refers to a new high priest, different from Jeshua the high priest when the temple was rebuilt (see e.g. Ezra 3:2 for the high priest during Ezra’s period).  I don’t have an exact chronology, but Eliashib is almost certainly high priest after Jeshua, since Ezra implies that Jeshua was the very first high priest to return with Zerubbabel and the people from Babylon.  Given that there is now a new high priest and Jeshua is probably dead, it suggests that Nehemiah’s departure for Jerusalem could be anywhere from 3-15 years after the temple was rebuilt.  To be honest, I’m making up the numbers but you just have to ask yourself how long it would take Jeshua to die, and add some undefined length of years after that, and that is when Nehemiah left for Jerusalem.  What’s clear is that Nehemiah did not come with the first wave (and for that matter, neither did Ezra, but Jeshua was still alive when Ezra arrived and he is not alive when Nehemiah arrives).

Verse 15 implies that “City of David” refers to a part of Jerusalem, perhaps some kind of “old city” in Jerusalem that was a nucleus for later development of the city.  In later times, “City of David” becomes an alternative name for Jerusalem as a whole, not just the “city of David” that inherited the name in Nehemiah’s lifetime.  So it’s kind of interesting to see Nehemiah use the term in what we can imagine was the original sense.

More generally, I think it is useful for us to ask why Nehemiah is including this passage in the text.  Why does Nehemiah want to list every family that helped build the wall?  Why is this important to Nehemiah, and what can we learn from it?  I think it’s simple enough for us to understand why this is important to Nehemiah: rebuilding the wall is why Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem in the first place, and it makes sense that he would want to record the details of the rebuilding process.  But what can we learn from this chapter?

There is always room for many interpretations and many lessons from a given story, but what I notice here is that nearly every man in this chapter is only known from this one place.  These are people who are not mentioned anywhere else in the bible and certainly not in any other extant ancient literature.  In a sense, the book of Nehemiah is a memorial to their efforts that they most likely did not anticipate.  At the time, these men were probably thinking 90% about how the wall would help protect them from raiders and foreign armies, and perhaps 10% how the wall would be a legacy to help protect their children.  They probably thought that the wall, a massive physical structure, would be the enduring testimony to their hard labors.  Ironically, the wall itself was destroyed long ago by Judah’s numerous enemies, but Nehemiah’s chronicle of their efforts has survived, and through this book memory of their deeds has been preserved.

Lastly, and I think this could be my most important point, this chapter is a testimony to the power of unity and collaboration.  Even though the book bears Nehemiah’s name, Nehemiah himself recognizes that the wall was not a product of his own labor as much as it was the product of dozens of leaders with their hundreds of followers, all working together with a common purpose.  Each man is given a distinct role.  Each section of wall or each gate has a different name, a different context and situation.  Different people are called to different places.  If every person in Jerusalem sought to rebuild the Sheep’s gate, they would have had dozens of gates but no wall to place it in.  They recognized that different people had to build different parts of the wall in order to make a whole.  Diversity was more than just a progressive ideal promoted for its own sake.  If they did not have a diversity of people building different parts of the wall, they would not achieve their goal.

Nehemiah writes this chapter to recognize their contribution to the good of the Jewish people as a whole.  They all benefitted from the wall, and as far as I can tell it was the product of the whole community as well.  Even though Nehemiah was zealous to rebuild the wall, the effort required was greater than the power of any one man no matter how diligent.  There are certain goals that require a community to achieve them.  I would go one step further and say that usually the most important things require a community effort to achieve.  We can be faithful to God as individuals, we can seek to build the kingdom of God as individuals, but in order to transform society we usually need a community to do it.

Knowledgeable readers may point out counterexamples (for instance, many of the judges saved Israel singlehanded), and it is true that just one person, empowered with the Spirit of God, is capable of anything.  But I would argue that the message of Nehemiah is the critical importance of having a community work towards a common goal and I think we see that in both the old testament and the modern church.  It seems like God only starts working through solo prophets when the community itself goes off into idolatry or something awful like that.  From what I’ve seen, I think God works through communities of believers for so long as a viable community exists and only starts using prophets or judges as a tool to get the community back into obedience.

In the next chapter, the resistance begins to plot against the Jews in earnest.