Bible Commentary - Nehemiah 7

In this chapter, Nehemiah gives instructions for keeping the gates, and then reads from a census of the returning exiles.

In the first couple verses, Nehemiah finishes up his administrative tasks from the construction of the wall.  It’s not enough to just build the wall, he also needs to appoint officials and guards to monitor the wall and ensure that their enemies don’t sneak in during the night or climb over the wall or something.  Nehemiah also notes that the city is large and sparsely populated.  This is something that will come up later, because Nehemiah is actually concerned about Jerusalem’s low population, though the exact reason for his concern is never explained.

Anyway, the bulk of this chapter is concerning the “genealogy” (v. 5) that lists all the families and cities of Judeans who had returned from exile.  Verse 5 tells us that this book is of those who “first” came back.  Before continuing, one important point to bring up here is that this genealogy is virtually identical to the listing from Ezra 2 (beginning in verse 6 of this chapter).  There are various implications but I will limit myself to only say that they are clearly using the same common source material, and in my opinion its inclusion in these two books reinforces the authenticity of this source document.  Since they are both copying the exact same genealogy, I think it’s important for us to understand what is their motivation for including it in their respective documents.

As previously discussed, Nehemiah is not among the first returning exiles.  He came back as part of a second or more likely third wave to reinforce and strengthen the people in Jerusalem.  The “book of the genealogy” is then a record of the people from the very first wave, their number, their families and their animals.

Earlier genealogies like in the book of Numbers had obviously military terminology, referring to groups of people and their commanders or leaders.  On the other hand, the census here does not have any martial overtones that I can see.  This is not the people organizing for battle like when they were marching into the promised land so long ago, under the leadership of Moses and Joshua.  This is not a people returning to claim the land by force and drive out their enemies.  Rather, they are returning to a desolate and partially depopulated land, to reclaim their homeland under the aegis of the Persian king’s permission.

The contrast with this earlier census could not be more striking.  The last time Israel marched boldly into the promised land, their census counted around two million men, excluding women and children.  They lost a generation in the wilderness, but nevertheless I see pride in Israel’s march across the Jordan, led by the priests and the tabernacle, and I see pride when they marched around Jericho seven times until the walls fell.  There is a certain triumphalism in Israel’s victories and the trembling fear of their enemies.

The exiles who returned from Babylon numbered 40,000, fifty times fewer people than their first journey into their prospective homeland.  To me, this second march feels hopeful but chastened.  We see a chastened attitude in Nehemiah’s prayer, declaring in strong language the manifold sins of Israel and the LORD’s justice in punishing them.  I can’t think of a single time that Joshua confessed his people’s sins and begged for mercy the way that Nehemiah did.  When the LORD spoke to Joshua, Joshua was instructed to be bold and courageous.  God was with them doing powerful things.  I’m sure that Nehemiah sees the LORD’s hand in their favorable treatment, but again I feel like this is a humble and contrite Judah.

We see the LORD speak to Joshua repeatedly, but interestingly I don’t see any references to the LORD speaking to Nehemiah.  We know that there were prophets who returned with the exiles, so it’s not that the voice of the LORD was gone completely.  I do think it’s interesting how in this era, the word of the LORD is almost entirely contained within the mouths of the prophets.  It’s also interesting how this period (the books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther) do not contain any overt miracles like in earlier times.  Joshua prayed for the sun to stop in the sky (Joshua 10), while Nehemiah prayed for a favorable response from the king.  This is mostly off-topic but I think it’s really interesting and I only noticed it when studying this chapter and the contrast of this genealogy with earlier documents from Israel’s history.  It reminded me again how different life is in the post-exilic era compared to Israel’s earlier periods.

So getting back on topic, the question is why does Nehemiah include this genealogy and more generally, what can we learn from this genealogy in Nehemiah’s story?

In my opinion, I think that the first couple verses in this chapter concludes Nehemiah’s “Wall Construction Story”.  The book obviously continues, but that particular story as it relates to building the wall and Nehemiah’s conflict with Sanballat is now completed.  Nehemiah takes this opportunity to recount the size and composition of the community.  Different people can read this different ways, but the message I see in this chapter is the endurance of the community during their exile.  They have suffered much, but they have survived and they have returned to the land that God called them to take as their inheritance.  Similar to chapter 3, I also see a lot of diversity in this chapter, with people coming from many different towns and families (though for obvious reasons, they are all from Judah or Benjamin).

In conclusion, this chapter is sandwiched between the previous story about the wall and the next story about the celebration of the festival of Booths (Sukkot) which Nehemiah re-institutes.  I don’t think it particularly relates to either story, so it’s possible that Nehemiah only put it here because it was a convenient place for him to put this material without interrupting the flow of the stories in his book.

In the next chapter, we will begin the story of Sukkot.