Day 272 (Nehemiah 11-13, Psalm 126) - Year 8

Tara-Leigh Cobble (0:01)

Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.

Today we finished our 37th and 38th Books of the Bible. When Chapter 11 opens today, we zoom in on some real estate details. The leaders live in Jerusalem, but they need some other people to live there too. Otherwise, who's going to open all the Starbucks on every street corner? Actually, it probably has more to do with keeping a strong military presence in the city, but soldiers need coffee. Okay, moving on. So they have a lottery, and 10% of the people are chosen to move to the city while some others go voluntarily. All in all, about 3,000 men are counted as living in Jerusalem at this point. But the total population is probably around two to three times that amount, since Nehemiah's count doesn't appear to include people who can't serve in the military. The other 90% of the population lives in the surrounding towns and villages.

After everybody gets unpacked, Nehemiah holds a grand opening ceremony to dedicate the newly finished wall. The Levites and priests and singers all gather for the huge event, singing and praising God. And one of the seemingly insignificant details listed in this passage recently served a huge purpose. 1237 says, At the fountain gate they went up straight before them by the stairs of the city of David, at the ascent of the wall above the house of David, to the water gate on the east. When we read that passage today, it's easy to be like, blah, blah, blah, get on to the good stuff. But little things like this that our eyes and ears fly past have made significant impact on recovering the history of ancient Jerusalem. That verse in particular helped archaeologists locate and unearth King David's palace less than two decades ago. Discoveries like that help us understand scripture better and even sometimes help us understand God better too.

When I read that passage, I can picture myself standing there in his palace, looking east over the rooftops.

And by the way, this is the same spot where not long ago, they recovered an ancient seal used by King David's son. We'll link to an article about that in the show notes.

Nehemiah and his people are standing in that spot for the big dedication of the wall. They march along the broad wall, which you can still see in Jerusalem today and around the people. They offer sacrifices and shouts of praise so loud that the neighboring towns can even hear it. It's like Coachella, but not at all.

There's also a bit of a job fair going on. They appoint people to new jobs like storehouse manager, gatekeeper, singer, musician, and all the people are thrilled about it because this signals to them that things are really moving forward with their new life in the old city. While they're all gathered around, they decide to read from the Torah again so they can keep learning what God says. And they find out that, oopsie, they're accidentally disobeying some of his commands. But as soon as they're informed about their sin, they set out to obey God. Meanwhile, remember Tabiah, the neighboring governor who taunted Nehemiah and tried to stop him from me building the wall? He's back. While Nehemiah was out of town on a business trip, Tabiah plotted with an insider to build a room for him in the temple courts. Are you kidding me? Nehemiah is furious and with good cause. This is righteous anger. He throws all Tabiah's furniture out into the street. Not gonna lie, I kinda wanted him to set it on fire. Then he purifies things and puts everything back in order. He also finds out that the Levites and Singers haven't been paid or fed. They're having to fend for themselves. This is not what the people promised they would do when he read them the Torah and they made a covenant to give generously to the temple and its workers. He calls all the people to account and they bring what they've been withholding. We're already starting to see that things are not going according to what the people promised. So it's no surprise that they're working on the Sabbath again. Not only that, but every Sabbath is basically a big flea market where all the people from outside town bring in stuff to sell to the locals. So Nehemiah first warns the locals that they're inviting disaster because they're breaking the covenant. Then he starts locking the city gates every Sabbath so the outsiders can't come in and sell things to the locals. He threatens to physically harm them if they come back again. He'd rather fight the vendors personally than have God bring punishment on Jerusalem for breaking the covenant. He knows what exile is like and it's no good.