Bible Commentary - Nehemiah 10

In this chapter, Nehemiah and the other community leaders sign a contract to obey the covenant with God.

Broadly speaking, this chapter has two sections.  The first section is verses 1-27, which lists the names of the signatories.  The second section is verses 28-39 which lists the details of the contract that they are signing.

It’s tough to come up with any definitive identification of the signatories in this document.  Although there are several names familiar to us, we have reason to believe that most of the men mentioned here cannot be identified with biblical figures elsewhere.  For instance, Daniel in verse 6 may appear to be a reference to the biblical prophet Daniel.  However, the book with that same name identifies Daniel as a “son of Judah”, while in this passage Daniel is a priest (descendant of Levi).  Baruch (also from v. 6) is a figure from the book of Jeremiah, but it’s unlikely to be the same person because Nehemiah live roughly 70 years after Jeremiah, so Jeremiah and the Baruch of his time are likely dead by now.  Verse 2 mentions a Jeremiah and that is likely a different Jeremiah for the same reason.

More generally, people in biblical times would commonly reuse names (same as we do now), so just because we see a familiar name doesn’t mean it’s the same person.  Given the context, I think most of these figures are leaders of the community from this one window of time and unlikely to be significant anywhere outside of the chronicles of Ezra and Nehemiah.  On the other hand, many of these names are likely the same people as elsewhere in Ezra and Nehemiah, particularly Nehemiah chapters 7, 8 and 9 which include lists of central community figures and the Levites and priests.  That doesn’t really tell us anything we don’t otherwise know: the text clearly tells us that these are “the leaders of the people” (v. 14), which for our purposes is perhaps all that matters.

I think the second section is much more interesting.  In a similar way that the previous chapter was a reformulation of Israel’s history, this chapter may be viewed as a reformulation of the covenant, the Laws given through Moses.  We won’t see anything in this chapter that is not mentioned in the Pentateuch, but we might observe a change in emphasis on some laws over others.

Verse 30 begins with reiterating the importance of separating from foreign peoples.  I think this was an important principle in Moses’s time but it is even more urgent in Nehemiah’s time due to the intermarriage crisis that we saw in Ezra 9-10.  This played directly into the attack upon Nehemiah’s effort to build the wall.  Nehemiah 4:3 tells us that Tobiah is an Ammonite (a hostile foreign neighbor to Israel and Judah), but Nehemiah 6:17-19 tells us that many nobles of Judah “were bound by oath” to Tobiah due to intermarriage between Tobiah’s family and influential Judeans.  It’s clear that Tobiah cultivated ties with influential Judeans by intermarriage and then used his position to undermine Judah’s national interest.  This is especially relevant to Nehemiah because Tobiah was one of the chief antagonists against building the wall.

Observing the Sabbath is perhaps another special interest of Nehemiah’s, though we won’t see this until chapter 13 when Nehemiah observes people of Judah failing to keep the Sabbath.  I’ll talk about it more then, but it forms a second and lesser “moral crisis” after intermarriage with foreigners.

The rest of the commands mentioned in this document are related to giving.  There was the obligatory 1/3rd shekel tax for maintenance of the temple, the firstfruits offering and the tithe offered by the people for the Levites (which was itself tithed for the support of the priests).  Although the temple was recently rebuilt, without financial support the priests and Levites would have to go back to farming or find other jobs and the religious system basically falls apart.

I’m not sure if Nehemiah is emphasizing these laws because they are the most important or perhaps they are what the people were neglecting to obey.  Although my first instinct suggests that the people are lukewarm towards their faith and that is why they are ambivalent about giving, the previous several chapters have generally shown the people are actually quite dedicated to their faith.  Therefore, I think it’s more likely that they are failing to support the Levites and priests out of ignorance, or possibly because of their poverty.  We certainly know that the people are under a heavy burden of taxation from the Persian kings (cf. Nehemiah 9:36-37), so I could understand why paying another 10% tax in addition to their other burdens would be a problem for the poorer people.

This chapter leaves out many other laws of the covenant (for a brief summary, see Exodus 20-23), for instance the observation of the festivals like the Passover.  Normally Passover is incredibly important, and earlier in Nehemiah we saw the people observe Sukkot so it’s not like they considered the festivals unimportant.  I think it’s more likely that this document is a pledge to fix problems that Nehemiah and the other leaders see in their society.  That is, this chapter is not so much a reformulation of the Law as a selection of the commandments that are most relevant to their current social and religious problems.  It is incomplete and selective not because they are trying to reimagine the commandments but because Nehemiah and the other leaders only view some of these laws as relevant to solving their current problems.

In conclusion, Nehemiah is basically a fundamentalist.  When faced with social and religious problems, he turns to Israel’s historical law for the solution.  He does not believe that Judah needs to re-invent its culture and traditions for the modern era; rather, he seeks to return to what Judah and Israel was originally supposed to be, a people dedicated to God and living by God’s commands.  Although their present situation has changed, Nehemiah does not want to adapt or create a new law; he wants to turn back to the God of their fathers.  As a strictly theological point, this means that Nehemiah does not view the exile as God’s repudiation of the covenant.  If the covenant were broken, then there would be no point in signing a new document agreeing to obey some of the laws of Moses.  Instead, I would argue that Nehemiah views himself and his people as still living in the same covenant with God, and this is about returning to obedience to the covenant, but with a particular emphasis on the parts of the Law that are relevant to their current problems.

In the next chapter, Nehemiah gives us a census of the people living in Jerusalem and the outlying towns.