06/12/2025 – Day 346 – Nehemiah – Chapters 10 – 13 / 2 of 2 / Chapter 13 – “Epilogue”
What a study this book is! Again, thanks to J.G. McConville, excerpts from his Chapter 13 commentary provided here(section – pgs 146 -151) :
“We have had a first climax to the Book of Nehemiah in the dedication of the walls through the great ceremony in the Temple (chapter 12). We now come to another, which is altogether more sombre, and all too reminiscent of the low note on which the Book of Ezra also ended (chapters 9, 10). This warning about defection from the ideal thus becomes one of the key points of the combined work.
Following the dedication of the walls, Nehemiah’s movements are unclear. It is possible to interpret verse 6 to mean that he had spent twelve years continuously in Jerusalem, and only now returned to the king for the first time. Some think that 5:14 also implies this. Yet it is questionable whether he would have been given so long a leave of absence initially (2:6), and we have already suggested that his appointment of Hanani as charge-d-affaires in Jerusalem (7:2) implied an imminent departure in the first year of his governship. The likeliest scenario is that Nehemiah commuted a number of times between Jerusalem and the seat of Empire, and that during one of his absences – beginning in 433 B.C. (=the thirty-second year of Antaxerses, v. 6) – the various abuses recorded in Chapter 13 sprang up.
The practices which Nehemiah discovered to his horror on his return were those, by and large, to which the community had succumbed in the past. (The exiles were what in the parlance of modern crime detection are called recidivists.). They fell into three categories: (a) failure to maintain the purity of religion and the sanctity of the Temple (vv. 4-14); (b) desecration of the sabbath (vv. 15-22); (c) intermarriage with foreign women (vv. 23ff.). These are all interconnected, because foreign influence is present in each.”
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EPILOGUE – II
Nehemiah 13: 4-31 (cont-d)
“Nehemiah, not surprisingly, is emphatic in his combination of this repudiation of all he has striven for. At each stage he takes measures to eradicate the ill. Tobiah’s paraphernalia is bundled angrily out (v. 8) (in a gesture which foreshadows Jesus’ later temple clearance, John 2: 13ff), and the Temple is cleansed of everything unholy (v. 9). The Levites, who had fled to their cities in the country, on which they were permitted to raise some animal, Numbers 35:2) are restored to their position, and arrangements are made for them to receive once again their dues in return for cultic service (vv. 11-13). Guards are set on the gates to prevent sabbath abuse by traffic in merchandise (vv. 19,22) and a threat is issued which, by its effect (v. 21), says something about the fearsomeness of the men. Most picturesque of all is Nehemiah’s treatment of those who have married foreign women (v. 25)! Finally he banishes the errant grandson of Eliashib (v. 28).
His language is hardly less extreme. The people have forsaken the house of God (v. 11); they threaten to bring his wrath upon Israel (v. 18); they have acted treacherously against God (v. 27 – the word is ma’al. ,meaning a thorough-going-renunciation of the ways of God, deserving of the direst punishment; cf. 1 Chronicles 10: 13-14, where ‘unfaithfulness’ is ma’al). The clear implication of such strong language is that the covenant community, despite the near incredible turns of events which reinstated them in their land a century earlier, despite a recommitment to the Lord which was now more than a decade past, could not presume upon God’s goodness. It is a message which recalls that of the prophets. The Lord had been merciful indeed; but his salvation of Israel was a salvation into service and obedience. A covenant between God and a people that was god-less was a nonsense and could hold no future. For these reasons Nehemiah attempts to re-establish the conditions of chapters 10 and 12. He puts the people under oath once more (v. 25; cf. 10:29), and makes provision for the regular service of the Temple (vv. 30-31; cf. 10:32ff., 12:44ff.).
(iv)
The final note in Ezra-Nehemiah is thus one of ambiguity. We may wonder how the people who had so exuberantly celebrated the completion of the defenses against the enemy came so readily to accept the enemy’ presence within the Temple and the high priest’s family. How indeed, could those who had committed themselves so solemnly to religious purity (chapter 10) so rapidly return to practices which were essentially irreligious? If we sense a certain desperation about Nehemiah’s last efforts to put the house of Israel in order, a tiredness about the need yet again to bring back the wandering sheep to the right path, a feeling that there is no reason to think that this reform will be more successful than any other, a sense that after all he himself has done his best (vv. 14, 22b, 31b), then we may be catching the right meaning here.
Had our author wished to suggest that all was now well in Judah he could have stopped at 13:3. But he chose to finish on a bleak note. In reality this has been suggested since Ezra 1 when, as we saw, the return from Babylon was carefully not treated as the final glorious fulfillment of the prophet’s hopes. Indeed at every moment of triumph in the book there has been a ‘but’. Most notable was the ominous conclusion to Nehemiah 6, when the infamous Tobiah was down but clearly not out. The present chapter shows that he got to his feet to fight on. And even though his furniture lies on the street he will still have his friends in Jerusalem. The history of Judah from Nehemiah to Christ – so far as we know it – shows that Judaism would never for long be free of the threat from the enemy within. (The Sadducees of Jesus’ day were, by and large, influential priests who had imbibed freely at the springs of Graeco-Roman religion and mores for the sake of prestige with the overlords of their day.)
(v)
The leads us to make two final points about the message of Ezra – Nehemiah.
(a). No complacency
Our books cannot be dismissed as pessimistic. The release from Babylon is a sign of God’s saving purposes for Israel, and the beginning at least of prophecy fulfillment. The building of the Temple and then the walls are further triumphs. There is, furthermore, much to learn, not only from the spirituality of Ezra and Nehemiah themselves, but from the whole community in its moments of devotion, about the life of worship and service. Yet it is clear that the community’s hold upon obedience was always tenuous. The moments of joy in the Lord were, apparently, moments indeed. The tendency to go into decline was always imminent. If Nehemiah 12 represents one of the ever-present possibilities for the people of God, so too does Chapter 13. The Church can never take anything for granted. It is never reformed once-for-all, but rather – as the Redeemers in the 16th century knew well – semper reformanda (“always needing to be reformed”), simply because of the perversity and inconstancy within human beings.
(b) Pointers to New Covenant
The second point is related to the first. It is the very inconstancy of human beings which makes us realize that no mere restoration of Jerusalem could ever be a final fulfillment of the Old Testament’s prophecies. Something totally new would be required. And that new thing was the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; a man, at last, who could stand in the place of all Israel, and, because he was God, render perfect obedience. Only with him could the prophecies which the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah do not claim to have fulfilled (e.g. Isaiah 60:1-3; 61: 1-4) come to have meaning. The inability of the chosen people of the Old Testament to meet the terms of the covenant in any definitive way, which our books so clearly illustrate, leads naturally into these statements of the New Testament which show the need for a new way of salvation apart from the law, which was, according to Paul, but ‘our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith’ (Galatians 3: 23-26; cf. Romans 3:21). In that time there would be ‘neither Jew nor Greek’ in the sight of God (Galatians 3:28); since salvation was no longer tied to a law of Israel, then God’s ‘Israel’ need no longer be a political nations, and it certainly need no longer be defined by a Temple or enclosed by walls.
Yet the things that happened to the Jews in the days of Cyrus and until the days of Artaxerxes are no mere irrelevancy in the history of salvation. Had the Jews not occupied their land and provided, at least, a focus for Judaism, how could their Messiah have come first of all to ‘the lost sheep of the home of Israel’ (Matthew 10:6) in any recognizable way? There is joy in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah which brings us close to the heart of God and shows us some of the possibilities of real piety. And there is sadness too – but the sadness — but the sadness points us to Christ.”
Soli Deo Gloria!