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.