Nehemiah 8 has the theme of the rebirth of Judaism through Ezra reading the Law and the observance of the feast of shelters. It follows Ezra 8:36, Ezra having arrived from Babylon to promulgate the Law. The Chronicler uses the report of Ezra at this point. It occurs in 428/7. I will pay special attention to Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10. It is part of the large section of material from Ezra 7 -- Nehemiah 13 that depicts the implementation of Mosaic law as the socio-religious foundation of the restored Jewish community centered around Jerusalem. This passage offers me an opportunity to reflect upon the honor we give to the faithful witness to divine revelation in our sacred text, the Bible. We need better knowledge, of course, but we also need lives that reflect a desire to obey it as well.
The book of Nehemiah makes clear that people of faith also need access to the truth. The citizens of Judah lived in exile in Babylon for 70 years, cut off from their homeland and their temple in Jerusalem. They had little access to the news of Judah and were living as strangers in a strange land. Finally, they were allowed to return home. Their governor, Nehemiah, led them in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, and the priest-scribe Ezra read from Scripture while the people listened. For them, the truth came not through the Water Gate in the walls of Jerusalem. The Word of God really mattered to the people. The people of Jerusalem craved the truth that came through Scripture.
1All the people gathered together as one person into the square before the Water Gate. This was southeast of the temple, and not on sacred ground. This refers to the current "Dung Gate," which is closest to both the Western Wall of the Temple and the road to the Pool of Siloam. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the Law of Moses (Torah, the first five books of the Bible), which the LORD had given to Israel. It seems more likely that Ezra initiated this declaration, as Ezra 7:25 suggests. 2 Accordingly, having just called him scribe, the Chronicler now says the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and, in an atypical mention of the presence of women (also Exodus 35:22 and II Samuel 6:19) and all who could hear with understanding (referring to older children or to those who could understand the Hebrew of the biblical text, which was already becoming an archaic literary language). The rarity of “men and women” suggests to some scholars that references to “the people of Israel,” “all Israel,” and “the congregation” may have meant the men, excluding women and children. The reference to those who could with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month, which was the day of the new moon, introducing the month of Tishri, the most important festival month in the Jewish calendar. The day would eventually become Rosh Hashana (New Year's Day), an entirely fitting occasion on which to renew the religious community. 3 He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning (sunrise) until midday (noon), in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. 5Further, Ezra opened the book, unrolling a scroll, since the codex was adopted as a Torah vehicle until several centuries after Ezra, in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up out of respect to the Law. 6 Then Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, "Amen, Amen," ("it is firm, established" or "may it be so," being the participation of the people in the blessing by Ezra) lifting up their hands (Psalm 78:2). Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground, suggesting that the previous standing by the people was preparation for bowing out of profound respect. This was not a worship service, for the people were at the gate instead of the Temple. Anyone could be present, instead of just males. Everything described in the text lends significance to this occasion. Irrespective of the people's ability to comprehend biblical Hebrew, the Levites -- temple assistants during the extant temples, sacral assistants during other eras -- moved through the crowd "helping the people to understand the law" (v. 7). The Levites may have been providing brief commentary on the reading or translating it into the vernacular for various non-Hebrew speakers. 8 Therefore, they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation (meporash, "separately" or "distinctly" or "with pauses," and can indicate either commentary or translation). They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. In Psalm 78, the writer invites the people to listen to his teaching, and he will expound a theme and hold forth on the lessons of the past. The second longest Psalm, it draws lessons from the history of Israel. The Levites explained the Law to the people. This was why Ezra came to Judah. Ezra read in Hebrew and the Levites interpreted in Aramaic. Rabbis saw this as the beginning of the Targums. 9 Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep." For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. They did so as a sign of repentance. This passage, along with 12:26, 36, emphasize the wholehearted support of the people for the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, while other references to opposition to their reforms make it unlikely that the support was as earnest as this passage suggests. Since this was a festival day, the people were not supposed to weep. The Levites calmed the people down, telling them to be quiet. They are to dry their eyes and prepare to feast. 10 Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD. In this way, they can conduct even their first official celebration of their new covenant with the LORD considering the law that commands charity for the poor. The Chronicler applies the rule in Deuteronomy in an obvious way. During the festival of booths, they are to rejoice as males and female Israelites, slaves, Levites, strangers, orphans, and widows, as the Lord will bless their produce (Deuteronomy 16:13-15).[1] The connection with Joshua shows a relation to the Law and wilderness period rather than agricultural festivals. He then urges them not to have grief. They are not to mourn or weep. The people were in tears as they listened to the Law. The reason is that the joy of the LORD is your strength. Ezra and Nehemiah, at this point, must reassure them that what they have on that day is a new beginning. They do not have to weep for their past failures. They can begin right then to observe the law they now understand.
Giving honor and respect to God involves humbly receiving the Word of God. As Psalm 19 puts it, this Word revives the soul, gives wisdom, grants insight, warns us, and corrects us. This Word is more precious to the believer than any material wealth.
Fortunately, the Bible does not focus upon the original language, as if it constituted the precise words of God. The Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek languages cannot be the only vehicles for the Word of God. Ezra had to translate the Hebrew into Aramaic. The Gospel writers translated the Aramaic words of Jesus into Greek. The New Testament authors often used the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Consequently, the focus of the Bible is on the message of the Bible, not individual words. We honor that message, the Word of God. For that reason, the Christians have translated the Bible into many languages over the centuries. We can celebrate when we hear the Word of God in our own language.
The words of the Bible are not just words on a page. The Book that contains these words ought not to be gathering dust. We need the discipline of giving attention to the Bible daily. Whether we realize it or not, we need what the Bible teaches us. We can freely admit that we struggle to understand it. The historical difference between the text and us may make it difficult at times. We may struggle to understand the context of difficult sayings. Yet, amid struggles, the Spirit makes the words live.
Understanding the Bible properly means that we “stand under” the Bible, allowing it to shape our lives. It may cause us to weep out of our need to repent, to turn our lives away from obsession with self and toward what God wants in our lives. It may cause to celebrate, as we daily see that the joy of the Lord is our strength.
A few times in the Bible, it seems like the Bible itself became part of a time capsule, forgotten by people. II Kings 22 is an example. During the reign of King Josiah, someone finds the book of the Law during a time of the restoration of the Temple. The discovery let to be a brief period of reform.
Think of it would be like to live in a world where God no longer provided a faithful witness to divine revelation that we can then wrestle with as it provides us guidance.
The Book of Eli is a 2010 movie starring Denzel Washington. It received average reviews and did not do that well at the box office. It reflected upon the condition of humanity after an apocalyptic-type war. Eli hears a voice telling him to take a book to the west coast. Along the way, he will encounter many challenges, we will learn about what happened to the world, and we learn about the book. By the end of the movie, we know it is a Bible. We also learn that the text is braille. Only Eli can read it, and he does so, as another person writes down what he says. Eventually, he dies as he speaks the last words of the text. Here is a community that is carefully preserving the great words of history.
We also know that around 428 BC, after Nehemiah had the walls rebuilt, Ezra the priest read the words of the Law before a people who had long since forgotten what God wanted of them (Nehemiah 8). The years in Babylon had caused them to lose their memory. The promises of restoration that we find in Ezekiel and in Isaiah 40-55, which made it seem as if things would be wonderful upon the return of the exiles to Jerusalem, no longer inspired people. Even the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah regarding the rebuilding of the Temple might ring hollow. They still wrestled with who they are now, as a people, after the devastation of the exile and still ruled by a foreign power, Persia. Yet, Ezra and Nehemiah pull out the scroll of the Torah, Ezra reads, and the people acknowledge that they had forgotten.
Within the church, we still have our Bibles. We can read them privately, we can read them in small groups, and we can preach from them.
The rest of culture may forget its roots in the Bible and in Christianity. In fact, the process is beginning, I think. The secularizing of the culture will steadily push away the church and the Bible. Future generations will find the speeches of early Presidents quite strange, simply because they will not have heard of the biblical and Christian background of America. I do not want you to misunderstand. Even though many people did not go to church and many people used their Bible to support slavery, most people knew their Bible. Such days, I suggest, are soon gone.
Here is the problem. The culture will do what it will, and if it wishes to seek values independently of the Bible, it will do so. God has granted us freedom and independence. The culture can seek complete independence of the Bible. That is its right.
In contrast, the church lives by a different code – or at least it should. The church looks upon the Bible as the primary witness to the revelation of God.
Here is my point. If Christianity forgets its Bible, it will die.
This passage captures the moment the Jewish people truly form as a people. The passage connects them with their past life and worship in the land. They re-connected with the land God had promised them. They were standing in a re-built temple. Most importantly, however, was that they heard the voice of God in their Torah, the Law or instruction they received from God. They wept, repented, rejoiced, and returned to the Lord. They made a new beginning.
They were the people of God, and the moment they knew that came in the reading of the Scriptures. They understood again that they were indeed the "People of the Book" -- to borrow the name that the Qur'an applies to faithful Jews and Christians. The Torah was a national symbol of Jewish identity in the same way 13 stripes and 50 stars are to Americans. Foreigners still dominated the land politically. They would be scattered from the land again. Yet, the Torah would provide them with their identity.
I have been suggesting that the image of exile, the image of the church seeking to be the church in a foreign territory, might be something about which we need to think and pray. So what can modern Christians learn from this Jewish identification with the Scriptures? How can we be "People of the Book?" Should we be “people of the book?”
First, "Keep these words ..." The Shema of Deuteronomy 6 exhorted Israel to make Scripture part of the fabric of their entire day. They were to keep the commands in their hearts, talk about them with their children, and speak of them at home and on the road. The Jews had an oral culture. Few people could read and write. Therefore, beyond temple Torah reading, this was how they "kept these words." This was their devotional life and daily interaction with the law.
For many Christians, the only interaction with Scripture happens through preaching or a church small group. We add the occasional devotional reading. Nevertheless, there are ways that we can more frequently weave Scripture into our daily rhythms. People have sought to adapt the liturgy of the hours to modern life. You read a psalm or a biblical story to your children at night. We might add some Bible reading to our lunch.
Mark Twain once related a conversation he had with an executive, who said to him, "Before I die, I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud at the top." "I have a better idea," replied Twain. "You could stay home and keep them."
With a bit of creativity and intentionality, we can weave moments to "keep these words" into everyday life.
Second, "Fix them as an emblem on your forehead." The Shema continues by encouraging believers metaphorically to bind the Law on their hands and foreheads to have their lives marked by it. Taken this was the inspiration for the phylacteries of the Pharisees and modern Orthodox Jews. Well, that was one way to keep these words with them. The Gideon ministry long encouraged keeping a pocket New Testament. Today, many of us have discovered that even when it comes to the Bible, there is an app for that. I think of YouVersion or Bible Gateway as excellent for this. Today, we have many opportunities to saturate ourselves with the Word.
Third, "How sweet are your words to my taste." Psalm 119: "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (v. 103). While that is a metaphor, it points toward a real-world desire for the Scriptures to become an intense hunger for wisdom. The Hebrew psalmist lavished over the beauty of the Scripture, and the crowd wept because of it in our text. So is anyone wondering if we are reading the same book? What would it take for the Bible to affect us like that?
In Eat This Book, Eugene Peterson suggests that we must return our Scripture reading to the Jewish mentality -- making it a moment of hearing God's voice with our ears, and not merely reading text with our eyes. He encourages us to internalize Scripture, not just see it.
"Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son."[2]
To state the obvious, this approach to the Bible will lead to prayerful meditation and contemplation in our reading. We can allow these words to shape our identity. Through study and reflection, we can become more "doers of the word, and not merely hearers" (James 1:22). Harry Emerson Fosdick, famed preacher of the first half of the twentieth century once said, "No steam or gas drives anything until it is confined. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined."
Who would have imagined a people cheering because someone had just given them the law? They cheered Ezra, though. They knew it would give them the type of confinement, focus, dedication, and discipline necessary to live the life they would need to live in exile.
The Jews of Nehemiah may not have been the most ardent followers of Torah -- disregard for the law was the reason God brought their ancestors into exile in the first place. Nevertheless, we do see a stunning image of Scripture marking them. They sought their very identity within Torah that day in Jerusalem.
The image of that time-capsule moment can challenge us. Of all people in America, we must not forget. Being “people of the book,” when you are a Christian, is a good thing to be. How will it become so in your life?
I hope we will not need a time capsule to remind us.
Unlike these Jerusalem Jews, we do not have a problem with access to the Scriptures in our own language. What is remarkable about this passage is the power of the Word of God to penetrate the human spirit, to speak to the heart, to touch the deepest corners of the soul.
We gather for worship because of the Word. I think we need to acknowledge a certain facticity to the Bible within the church. We do not preach from modern psychology books, as helpful as they may be. We do not preach from Buddha or Muhammad, even though both said good things. The Word of God calls us to be the church. Jesus calls us to follow him. It is amazing when you think about the church. We have so little to hold us together, as the world judges these things. We have a variety of backgrounds, perspectives in religion and politics, varying races, and varying economic classes. That we are here at all is great testimony to the power of God's word.
The Word addresses our need. I doubt if people outside of the church realize the Bible addresses their need for a relationship with God and for moral guidance in relationship with others. Yet, the primary business of Christians is to understand the Word of God, and thus to lay our lives alongside the Word of God. We gather for worship because we know that our private reading of the Bible is not enough. We need to the insights of others as well. We nourish our faith as we read, listen to a sermon, and hear the Word. Our faith grows through the Word. As individuals, we may come to worship empty, down, depressed, and despondent. Something happens through the Word, whether we hear it in a hymn, song, scripture, or sermon, and we have heard a personal Word that gives some sense and meaning to the chaos you experience. Through the Spirit, the Word touched your life. Other gods entice you, whether through pleasure, violence, power, wealth, and popularity. The God of Jesus Christ calls peacefully, but powerfully, through the Word.
We need to “stand under” the Word of God. Regrettably, people are passionate, sometimes fanatic, about the translations that they prefer to use or to hate. We need to remember that the New Testament itself is a translation. Jesus spoke Aramaic, and we have few reflections of that language in the Bible. The church has always concerned itself with the message and themes of the Bible, rather than the actual Hebrew and Greek text. We need to become comfortable opening our Bible and reading them. Becoming part of a group that studies the Bible can be a powerful influence upon us. The knowledge we gain is important, but only as it leads to a life of obedience to that Word. Obedience may be uncomfortable. We may have to give up some cherished ideas or practices as we listen and obey.
Thus, our problem today is not access to bibles, but faithfulness. To "understand" the Bible means, quite literally, to "stand under" the Bible - to place ourselves under its authority, to take it personally, to allow our lives to be shaped by it and to give it our trust and our confidence. When we seek to understand the Bible, we are doing more than making a reasonable effort to understand what the words mean. Instead, we are "standing under" Scripture's view of God and humanity and sacred history and giving it not only the insight of our brains, but also the allegiance of our hearts and lives. Therefore, all the people of Judah wept when they heard the words of the law, and then went their way to eat and drink and to make great rejoicing. They wept and rejoiced, in heart and mind, "because they had understood the words that were declared to them" (8:12).
In ancient times and today, the Word of God has the power to penetrate the human spirit, to speak to the heart, to touch the deepest corners of the soul. Think of the biblical passages that still have this effect today:
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1)
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 29:11)
“Do justice … love kindness … walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8)
“Love is patient; love is kind” (1 Corinthians 13:4)
“I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13)
“All things work together for good for those who love God” (Romans 8:28)
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
These are words that touch our spirits, hearts, and souls.
We undoubtedly differ as to our theories about the Bible. However, our theories mean nothing if we do not actually read it, allowing it to shape our lives.
[1] Deuteronomy 16:13-15
13 You shall keep the festival of booths for seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your wine press. 14 Rejoice during your festival, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, as well as the Levites, the strangers, the orphans, and the widows resident in your towns. 15 Seven days you shall keep the festival to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose; for the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all your undertakings, and you shall surely celebrate.
[2] – Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book
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