In this chapter, Nehemiah visits the king of Persia and returns to find the people sinning in many matters.
The storytelling in this part of the chapter is not entirely linear, so I think it’s worth taking a moment to figure out what is happening and when. Verses 1-3 tell us that “on the same day” as the prior dedication of the wall, they read aloud from the book of Moses and “they excluded all foreigners from Israel” (v. 3). Because it was “the same day”, we can reasonably infer that Nehemiah was present, because the previous chapter was very clear that Nehemiah was present at the dedication (v. 31 and following). In verse 4, it says that “prior to this” Eliashib gave a special room in the temple to Tobiah. We would assume that meant “before the dedication” that happened on the previous day.
However, verse 6 tells us that “during all this time” Nehemiah was not in Jerusalem. “This time” is referring to the “time” when the priest Eliashib gave the special room to Tobiah. However, the implication is that Nehemiah must have left Jerusalem before they dedicated the wall. The book of Nehemiah does not tell us what year the wall was finished; all we know is that Nehemiah came to Jerusalem in the 20th year of Artaxerxes (Neh 2:1) and returned to the king in the 32nd year (v. 6). So he was in Jerusalem for twelve years. My assumption is that he finished the wall before those twelve years were up, and it seems likely they would have celebrated the dedication at that time.
Verse 6 leaves us in a bit of conundrum, though. If Nehemiah was present at the dedication and was absent when Eliashib gave the room to Tobiah, it suggests that Nehemiah was present until the wall was completed, left to return to Artaxerxes and then came back to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication. This fits into the story reasonably well, since Sanballat frequently attacked Nehemiah’s relationship with the king, so it stands to reason that Nehemiah would return to the king to assure him of Nehemiah’s continued loyalty. The last direct mention of Nehemiah before this chapter was in Neh 10:1 when he signed his name on the covenantal document. Later verses in that chapter referred to things “we” did, suggesting Nehemiah was still physically present. Chapter 11 does not include any references to Nehemiah and in chapter 12 they celebrate the dedication festival. The only possible gap in Nehemiah’s physical presence in the city is chapter 11, after the priests gathered to read the Law and before the dedication of the wall.
Even though the text doesn’t say it, it’s likely that Nehemiah took a brief interlude where he personally travelled back to Susa to visit the king, and that he’s writing about the Judeans in the third person based on what he later learned upon his return. This is the gap of time when he wasn’t present and when everything started going wrong. Once Nehemiah came back, they celebrated the dedication of the wall.
Chapter 13 is basically Nehemiah telling us about a bunch of things that happened while he was gone, and what he did to fix them, but the actual point when Nehemiah left the city was most likely during the events of chapter 11. I think it’s a little surprising that Nehemiah would have left the city before dedicating the wall, since as we have learned the wall of Jerusalem is Nehemiah’s central focus. I suspect that Nehemiah was forced to return to the king, whether by the date that he had set (Neh 2:6) or as a reaction to Sanballat’s agitation, and even though the wall saga was not finished, Nehemiah was driven by circumstance. He returned when he could and they dedicated the wall afterwards. I think Nehemiah restructured the narrative, putting the dedication of the wall first in chapter 12 because he was trying to keep the wall narrative more compact. The events in this chapter happened mostly earlier, but he reordered the chronology because they are not central to the wall narrative.
Anyway, the content of this chapter is focused on four major controversies which Nehemiah sought to resolve upon his return to Jerusalem. The way I imagine this story is Nehemiah walking out the gate and, like a parent going out for a night on the town, telling the kids (everyone else) who were staying behind to “be good while I am gone”. As it always goes in such situations, when Nehemiah returned he found the metaphorical house in complete disarray. This whole chapter is about all the things that got messed up while Nehemiah was not around to keep things running in proper order, and what Nehemiah did to fix the problems he found when he returned.
The first controversy is the room that Eliashib the priest gave to Tobiah in the temple. This is a clear offense in Nehemiah’s mind because Tobiah is one of his main enemies (second only to Sanballat, see e.g. Neh 4:3, 4:7). It is an affront for Tobiah, an enemy of the Jews, to be given a room in the temple which is their most sacred place. Verse 4 tells us that Eliashib is “related” to Tobiah. Neh 6:17-18 established Tobiah’s familial ties with leaders of Judah, and it is likely that Tobiah was related to Eliashib through one of those marriages. Nehemiah strongly disapproves and since Nehemiah is governor, Tobiah gets booted out.
The second controversy begins in verse 10. Basically what happened is that the people stopped paying the tithe to the Levites, so the Levites went back to their normal jobs, farming. Without a tithe the Levites are just ordinary people who have to get ordinary jobs. Nehemiah fixes the problem by getting “the officials” (presumably the men responsible for collecting the tithe) to go do their jobs (v. 11).
The third controversy begins in verse 15 when Nehemiah observes men of Judah working on the Sabbath. Nehemiah fights back by “admonishing” the men of Judah who worked on the Sabbath and forcing the gates of Jerusalem to be closed over the Sabbath. Foreigners, men from Tyre and other “merchants” (v. 20) were coming to Jerusalem to sell their wares over the Sabbath. While these foreigners do not need to observe the Sabbath, it is unlawful for the people of Judah to buy goods on the Sabbath (a kind of work), so the foreign merchants coming to sell goods over the Sabbath are inducing the Jews to sin. Nehemiah locks them out by closing the gate, but to be extra sure (and possibly out of anger) Nehemiah takes the extra step of threatening the merchants and ordering them to not even come to the city on the Sabbath (v. 21). Verse 22 implies that the Levites were responsible as gatekeepers to prevent commerce on the Sabbath. The second controversy, when the people stopped paying the tithe, is why the gatekeepers (Levites) left to go back to their ordinary jobs. There were no gatekeepers to help preserve the Sabbath and as a direct consequence, the people failed to observe the Sabbath as Nehemiah complains. This shows how failure to observe one part of the Law can undermine observation of other parts of the Law.
The fourth and final controversy begins in verse 23. Intermarriage with foreigners is the problem again. This was the big moral crisis in Ezra’s book (Ezra 9-10) and verse 3 in this same chapter tells us that Israel “excluded all foreigners” after reading the story of Balaam in the book of Numbers 22-24. However, it appears that wasn’t enough because later in the very same chapter the people are again intermarrying with foreigners and their children were learning foreign languages and not the language of the Jews.
The book concludes by telling us one of the priests himself had married a foreign wife and Nehemiah “drove him away from me”. The book concludes on a rather mixed note; even though Nehemiah is seeking to “purify” the priesthood, it feels like he is fighting a losing battle against those cultural forces. Every step that Nehemiah takes to purify the priesthood or enforce the Law, it feels like the priests and the people take four steps in the opposite direction. Nehemiah is a man of great diligence and faithfulness, but how much can he preserve the nation if the whole nation sins in his absence?
The very last words in the book show Nehemiah’s emphasis on proving his own faithfulness and dedication to God. It’s only really here, at the very end of the book, when Nehemiah finally reveals what was his inner motivation for writing this all down. As it turns out, Nehemiah was not writing for the benefit of posterity, he wasn’t writing to explain the social and political conditions of post-exilic Jerusalem, or any of these other things. He was writing to call God’s attention to his acts of faithfulness and ask God to reward him with “good” in his life.
We had a brief preview of this philosophy in Neh 5:19 and 6:14, but it only really emerges in force here in this last chapter when Nehemiah repeats the same phrase four times (v. 14, 22, 29, 31). Considering the overall effect, I feel like the entire book of Nehemiah is written like a kind of pseudo-prayer, in some parts recounting the history of Judah during Nehemiah’s governorship and in other parts describing Nehemiah’s deeds on behalf of the LORD, but in all parts it is seeking to communicate Nehemiah’s heart and lifestyle to the LORD as part of his overall petition for the LORD’s blessing in his life.
Most of the book is a historical narrative, but the conclusion of Nehemiah is a prayer: “LORD”, Nehemiah says, “you know all these things I just wrote about, all these good things I have done; remember these things. I wrote this whole book, LORD, so that you would know the good things I have done and that you would remember them and do good for me in return.” At its heart, this is a prayer, even though most of the book is not written in the literary style of a prayer. It is a prayer disguised as a historical narrative.
I think it’s funny how these brief comments here at the end of the book can so heavily influence our understanding of the previous 12 chapters. For so long reading through the book, I was mostly focused on the events Nehemiah was describing rather than asking why; what is Nehemiah’s motivation? Clearly he was motivated to help rebuild the wall, but that doesn’t address why Nehemiah wanted to go to the considerable effort and expense of writing about it. Even though I think the ending feels rather sudden, I also think it does a lot to wrap up that lingering question: Nehemiah was writing this book as a memorial to his efforts, that he might offer it up (both his efforts and the book) as an offering to the LORD.
Throughout the study of Nehemiah, I have frequently asked the question, “what can we learn from this chapter?” In the first chapter, we learned that Nehemiah understood God’s season for his people, the moment of his favor, and Nehemiah prayed and then acted. Nehemiah was a man of prayer and action, pursuing what he understood about God’s will for his people and how to bless his people. In this chapter, we learn that all of Nehemiah’s prayers and actions are wrapped together into this great bundle and offered wholly to the LORD. Nehemiah takes all his efforts, prayers, struggles and victories and gives them to the LORD and he says, remember me. Do not forget the labor of your servant. I think for us, the lesson is that we can follow Nehemiah’s example. We should understand God’s will for us and our people (friends, church, nation, etc.). We should pray, and we should act, and at the end of every deed we should offer it to the LORD and say, “LORD, this is an offering to you. Everything we have done, we do for you; remember us.” Nehemiah doesn’t say it directly, but I believe that his life is the kind of offering the LORD desires from us, and I believe that Nehemiah received (and perhaps will receive) the blessing he asked for. I can only hope that each one of us would also offer an acceptable sacrifice of our lives and deeds, and that we too would be remembered and receive the LORD’s blessing.
In the next book, we will begin the book of Esther!
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Bible Commentary - Nehemiah 12
In this chapter, Nehemiah gives us a genealogy of the Levites and then describes the dedication of the new wall in Jerusalem.
The genealogy is somewhat a continuation from the census in the previous chapter, but it’s not a direct continuation because in the previous chapter, Nehemiah was listing the people who were dwelling in Jerusalem during his time as governor. In this chapter, Nehemiah is listing the priests and Levites who returned to Judah in the first wave (i.e. “who came up with Zerubbabel… and Jeshua”). This first wave were the pioneers of the return to the promised land, and neither Nehemiah nor Ezra were among this first wave.
In fact, even though Ezra’s central topic was the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem, Ezra himself was not personally a witness or participant in those events. Ezra remained in exile during that initial period and returned as part of a secondary wave of returning exiles during the 7th year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:8). Nehemiah was part of a third, later wave that left 13 years after Ezra (Nehemiah 2:1). The original returnees went to Jerusalem in the first year of King Cyrus (Ezra 1:1), which means that Nehemiah is writing at least twenty years after the first exile returned to Jerusalem.
In fact, verses 10-11 give us some sense of the time that has passed. Nehemiah lists five generations of descendants of Jeshua. At first glance, this might appear to contradict the timeline of Nehemiah returning ~30-40 years after Jeshua since five generations would imply between 100-150 years have passed. However, my readers should understand that the high priest of Judah is almost by definition the oldest living priest. It is possible that he is more than 70 years old at the time of Cyrus’s decree, so he would have already had grandchildren or possibly even great grandchildren alive at that time. After two more generation (which could fit in a 40-50 year timeframe), Jeshua would have five living generations of descendants. Since Nehemiah might have been in the land for 5 or 10 years before writing this passage, we could reasonably infer that Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem about 50 years after Jeshua based on this genealogy. More precise dates are difficult to mine out of the bible text by itself, but when combined with external evidence, we can determine that Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem around 444 BC and Jeshua returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel in the 530’s BC, giving a time difference of about 90 years. Given the variability of generation length, this is consistent with the biblical account.
I don’t think anything in the genealogy itself is particularly interesting, but I do think verse 24 is interesting. It refers to David “prescribing” a particular system of praise and worship for the Levites and a divisional system. This is possibly an oblique reference to the book of Chronicles which contains regulations for the priestly divisions and the worship and praise ministries of the Levites. We know that Chronicles is a post-exilic book, but from this verse we can possibly say it is an early post-exilic book since by the time of Nehemiah it is considered an authoritative source for the organization of the temple.
In verse 27, Nehemiah connects his genealogy with the topic at hand. In verse 25-26, he lists the Levites who served during the priesthood of these earlier figures (the descendants of Jeshua), ending with a reference to himself and Ezra, and then verse 27 explains that these same Levites were the men that Nehemiah gathered together to the wall to praise God as part of the dedication ceremony. All the Levites are gathered from the surrounding towns to consecrate the people and the wall, and then they celebrated by splitting all the people, Levites and singers into two groups and traversing over the wall, probably from opposite directions, and converging at the temple. The leaders also split between these two groups, with Ezra leading one group and Nehemiah leading the other (implying equality between the religious leadership of Ezra and the political leadership of Nehemiah).
When the two choruses converged, they would have sung psalms of praise. Although we haven’t gotten to the book of Psalms yet, I can tell you now that many of the songs are “antiphonal”, which means that the song is divided into alternating choruses sung by two groups. This is almost certainly what they are doing here: Nehemiah divided the singers into two groups to sing antiphonal choruses. Antiphonal psalms are represented in the book of Psalms as well, with the clearest example being Psalm 136.
After their great rejoicing in the dedication, verse 44 and following tells us about the administration of the tithe, which is obviously an important issue with so many Levites and priests living in the city. Verse 46 reminds us that everything about the Levitical worship is following the ordinances of David; indeed, this chapter contains four separate references to David as it relates to various temple ordinances. Nehemiah clearly views David as the principal organizing force behind the temple system. If someone asked Nehemiah, “why are we doing this”, I think Nehemiah would answer, “because that is how David the man of God said that we must do it.” David is a deeply honored, almost mythical figure in Nehemiah’s Judah. Much like the book of Chronicles used David and Solomon as emblems of the “golden age” of Israel, Nehemiah also uses David as the primary source of their temple regulations and the moral authority behind these rules.
Nehemiah and Chronicles reference David in the same way, and for mostly the same reasons: because the people of his generation were trying to rebuild and recover their earlier national glory. In the same way that David became a symbol of the earlier golden age in Chronicles, Nehemiah also views the Davidic system as part of Judah’s national heritage that he must recover. I think it’s very likely that Nehemiah himself read Chronicles, but even if he didn’t, he was clearly influenced by the same current of thought that we find in Chronicles, which may have been widespread in Judean society.
This chapter concludes with the people “rejoicing over the priests and Levites who served”, so there doesn’t appear to be any conflict over the tithe at this time. This is consistent with the generally upbeat religious atmosphere during Nehemiah’s lifetime. Even though Nehemiah has to correct several social problems (like the usury issue from chapter 5), the general current of the book is religious dedication and optimism (for instance, the ceremonies and festivals of chapter 8).
In the next chapter, Nehemiah visits the king of Persia and confronts widespread moral decay upon his return to Jerusalem.
The genealogy is somewhat a continuation from the census in the previous chapter, but it’s not a direct continuation because in the previous chapter, Nehemiah was listing the people who were dwelling in Jerusalem during his time as governor. In this chapter, Nehemiah is listing the priests and Levites who returned to Judah in the first wave (i.e. “who came up with Zerubbabel… and Jeshua”). This first wave were the pioneers of the return to the promised land, and neither Nehemiah nor Ezra were among this first wave.
In fact, even though Ezra’s central topic was the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem, Ezra himself was not personally a witness or participant in those events. Ezra remained in exile during that initial period and returned as part of a secondary wave of returning exiles during the 7th year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:8). Nehemiah was part of a third, later wave that left 13 years after Ezra (Nehemiah 2:1). The original returnees went to Jerusalem in the first year of King Cyrus (Ezra 1:1), which means that Nehemiah is writing at least twenty years after the first exile returned to Jerusalem.
In fact, verses 10-11 give us some sense of the time that has passed. Nehemiah lists five generations of descendants of Jeshua. At first glance, this might appear to contradict the timeline of Nehemiah returning ~30-40 years after Jeshua since five generations would imply between 100-150 years have passed. However, my readers should understand that the high priest of Judah is almost by definition the oldest living priest. It is possible that he is more than 70 years old at the time of Cyrus’s decree, so he would have already had grandchildren or possibly even great grandchildren alive at that time. After two more generation (which could fit in a 40-50 year timeframe), Jeshua would have five living generations of descendants. Since Nehemiah might have been in the land for 5 or 10 years before writing this passage, we could reasonably infer that Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem about 50 years after Jeshua based on this genealogy. More precise dates are difficult to mine out of the bible text by itself, but when combined with external evidence, we can determine that Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem around 444 BC and Jeshua returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel in the 530’s BC, giving a time difference of about 90 years. Given the variability of generation length, this is consistent with the biblical account.
I don’t think anything in the genealogy itself is particularly interesting, but I do think verse 24 is interesting. It refers to David “prescribing” a particular system of praise and worship for the Levites and a divisional system. This is possibly an oblique reference to the book of Chronicles which contains regulations for the priestly divisions and the worship and praise ministries of the Levites. We know that Chronicles is a post-exilic book, but from this verse we can possibly say it is an early post-exilic book since by the time of Nehemiah it is considered an authoritative source for the organization of the temple.
In verse 27, Nehemiah connects his genealogy with the topic at hand. In verse 25-26, he lists the Levites who served during the priesthood of these earlier figures (the descendants of Jeshua), ending with a reference to himself and Ezra, and then verse 27 explains that these same Levites were the men that Nehemiah gathered together to the wall to praise God as part of the dedication ceremony. All the Levites are gathered from the surrounding towns to consecrate the people and the wall, and then they celebrated by splitting all the people, Levites and singers into two groups and traversing over the wall, probably from opposite directions, and converging at the temple. The leaders also split between these two groups, with Ezra leading one group and Nehemiah leading the other (implying equality between the religious leadership of Ezra and the political leadership of Nehemiah).
When the two choruses converged, they would have sung psalms of praise. Although we haven’t gotten to the book of Psalms yet, I can tell you now that many of the songs are “antiphonal”, which means that the song is divided into alternating choruses sung by two groups. This is almost certainly what they are doing here: Nehemiah divided the singers into two groups to sing antiphonal choruses. Antiphonal psalms are represented in the book of Psalms as well, with the clearest example being Psalm 136.
After their great rejoicing in the dedication, verse 44 and following tells us about the administration of the tithe, which is obviously an important issue with so many Levites and priests living in the city. Verse 46 reminds us that everything about the Levitical worship is following the ordinances of David; indeed, this chapter contains four separate references to David as it relates to various temple ordinances. Nehemiah clearly views David as the principal organizing force behind the temple system. If someone asked Nehemiah, “why are we doing this”, I think Nehemiah would answer, “because that is how David the man of God said that we must do it.” David is a deeply honored, almost mythical figure in Nehemiah’s Judah. Much like the book of Chronicles used David and Solomon as emblems of the “golden age” of Israel, Nehemiah also uses David as the primary source of their temple regulations and the moral authority behind these rules.
Nehemiah and Chronicles reference David in the same way, and for mostly the same reasons: because the people of his generation were trying to rebuild and recover their earlier national glory. In the same way that David became a symbol of the earlier golden age in Chronicles, Nehemiah also views the Davidic system as part of Judah’s national heritage that he must recover. I think it’s very likely that Nehemiah himself read Chronicles, but even if he didn’t, he was clearly influenced by the same current of thought that we find in Chronicles, which may have been widespread in Judean society.
This chapter concludes with the people “rejoicing over the priests and Levites who served”, so there doesn’t appear to be any conflict over the tithe at this time. This is consistent with the generally upbeat religious atmosphere during Nehemiah’s lifetime. Even though Nehemiah has to correct several social problems (like the usury issue from chapter 5), the general current of the book is religious dedication and optimism (for instance, the ceremonies and festivals of chapter 8).
In the next chapter, Nehemiah visits the king of Persia and confronts widespread moral decay upon his return to Jerusalem.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Bible Commentary - Nehemiah 11
In this chapter, Nehemiah lists the various leaders and clans of Israelites dwelling in Jerusalem.
In verses 1-2 we see a peculiar little story. We discover that first, the people are casting lots to bring one tenth of their population into Jerusalem. Second, they “bless” the men who volunteer to move (rather than be compelled). This shows two things. First, it shows that the people collectively see some reason why they need to move more people into the capital. Second, it shows that the people do not themselves want to move to the capital. However, the people’s motivation is not clear for either point.
Why would the people want to move more of their population into the city? I can only really offer speculation on this point, so that is exactly what I will do. I guess that they wanted to do this for the reason given in the first part of v. 1: “the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem”. That is, the nation needed more people in the city to serve the leaders and defend the city. If there is ever a situation when the leaders need to conscript some force, they could just go out and grab a bunch of people from the city and force them into some task or other. The last concentration of manpower makes it easier and faster to do this. We also know that the city was frequently threatened by their enemies, perhaps for exactly this reason. Perhaps Judah’s enemies recognized that if they could destroy the city then the outlying rural areas would be easier targets since the Judeans there would be in smaller groups and easily overpowered by a larger enemy.
Why would the people be reluctant to move to Jerusalem? I think my answer to the first question helps answer this one too: because the people don’t particularly want to live under threat of attack and under the compulsion of periodic conscriptions. Additionally, other commentaries suggest that the Judeans are still largely agricultural in this time period, so they would have a harder time earning a living in a city where farmland is scarce and skilled jobs typically associated with city living take a lot of training and these careers can be hard to get into.
After this short story, the main part of the chapter begins with a fairly extensive census of the groups living in Jerusalem. I won’t go through this in detail because as with elsewhere in Nehemiah, most of the people mentioned in this census are not referenced anywhere else in the bible. The last twelve verses (25-36) list some of the outlying towns in Judah, which is not much different in overall tenor or topic from the census of Jerusalem, so I won’t discuss that in detail either.
So what can we learn from this chapter? Overall, one thing that I notice from this chapter is the heavily religious character of Jerusalem. It is twice referred to as the “holy city” (v. 1, 18). If we believe Nehemiah’s numbers to be an exhaustive listing of all the residents in Jerusalem, it suggests that more than half the residents of Jerusalem are involved with religious service in some way or another. I count ~1,300 men of Benjamin and Judah (v. 6-8) and around 1,600 men who are either temple servants, Levites or gatekeepers (v. 12-14, 18-19). Jerusalem is the political capital of Judah, but it seems like its religious character as the home of the temple is even more important, at least from what we can see in this census.
I also think there is an interesting tension between the people’s desire to remain in the country and the national interest to bring more people into the city. The bible rarely speaks about this directly, so it’s hard for me to add more detail when so little is known about Judean society in this time period. All I will add here is that Judah remains a largely rural society during Nehemiah’s lifetime, even though Jerusalem plays a central role in both Nehemiah and Ezra’s stories. Remember what brought Nehemiah to return to Judah: he heard that Jerusalem’s wall had not been rebuilt. His principle concern was establishing Jerusalem as a political and military force in the region.
Repopulating the city is consistent with Nehemiah’s priorities, so from that point of view I think this chapter is just a continuation of Nehemiah’s overall focus on the health and wellbeing of Jerusalem.
In the next chapter, Nehemiah continues his census by listing the chief Levites, and then describes the dedication of the city wall.
In verses 1-2 we see a peculiar little story. We discover that first, the people are casting lots to bring one tenth of their population into Jerusalem. Second, they “bless” the men who volunteer to move (rather than be compelled). This shows two things. First, it shows that the people collectively see some reason why they need to move more people into the capital. Second, it shows that the people do not themselves want to move to the capital. However, the people’s motivation is not clear for either point.
Why would the people want to move more of their population into the city? I can only really offer speculation on this point, so that is exactly what I will do. I guess that they wanted to do this for the reason given in the first part of v. 1: “the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem”. That is, the nation needed more people in the city to serve the leaders and defend the city. If there is ever a situation when the leaders need to conscript some force, they could just go out and grab a bunch of people from the city and force them into some task or other. The last concentration of manpower makes it easier and faster to do this. We also know that the city was frequently threatened by their enemies, perhaps for exactly this reason. Perhaps Judah’s enemies recognized that if they could destroy the city then the outlying rural areas would be easier targets since the Judeans there would be in smaller groups and easily overpowered by a larger enemy.
Why would the people be reluctant to move to Jerusalem? I think my answer to the first question helps answer this one too: because the people don’t particularly want to live under threat of attack and under the compulsion of periodic conscriptions. Additionally, other commentaries suggest that the Judeans are still largely agricultural in this time period, so they would have a harder time earning a living in a city where farmland is scarce and skilled jobs typically associated with city living take a lot of training and these careers can be hard to get into.
After this short story, the main part of the chapter begins with a fairly extensive census of the groups living in Jerusalem. I won’t go through this in detail because as with elsewhere in Nehemiah, most of the people mentioned in this census are not referenced anywhere else in the bible. The last twelve verses (25-36) list some of the outlying towns in Judah, which is not much different in overall tenor or topic from the census of Jerusalem, so I won’t discuss that in detail either.
So what can we learn from this chapter? Overall, one thing that I notice from this chapter is the heavily religious character of Jerusalem. It is twice referred to as the “holy city” (v. 1, 18). If we believe Nehemiah’s numbers to be an exhaustive listing of all the residents in Jerusalem, it suggests that more than half the residents of Jerusalem are involved with religious service in some way or another. I count ~1,300 men of Benjamin and Judah (v. 6-8) and around 1,600 men who are either temple servants, Levites or gatekeepers (v. 12-14, 18-19). Jerusalem is the political capital of Judah, but it seems like its religious character as the home of the temple is even more important, at least from what we can see in this census.
I also think there is an interesting tension between the people’s desire to remain in the country and the national interest to bring more people into the city. The bible rarely speaks about this directly, so it’s hard for me to add more detail when so little is known about Judean society in this time period. All I will add here is that Judah remains a largely rural society during Nehemiah’s lifetime, even though Jerusalem plays a central role in both Nehemiah and Ezra’s stories. Remember what brought Nehemiah to return to Judah: he heard that Jerusalem’s wall had not been rebuilt. His principle concern was establishing Jerusalem as a political and military force in the region.
Repopulating the city is consistent with Nehemiah’s priorities, so from that point of view I think this chapter is just a continuation of Nehemiah’s overall focus on the health and wellbeing of Jerusalem.
In the next chapter, Nehemiah continues his census by listing the chief Levites, and then describes the dedication of the city wall.
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