05/28/2025 – Day 332 – Nehemiah – Chapters 1 – 4 /3 of ? / Chapter Two -Central question – “Who belongs to Israel ?”
Why the list of people who came out of the captivity of those exiles whom Nebuchhadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried to Babylon? The first verse explains: “… they returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town.”
I will share here some excerpts from J.G. McConville that will really help us to understand the historical cultural context, picking it up on page #15 and ending at page #18.
“The impression of a community that is motivated by the noblest intentions is borne out of the generosity of at least some of the heads of families in providing for the building of the Temple (v. 68). There is an echo how the exodus account here (as there was in 1:4,6), for the people of that generation were also asked to make large contributions to the building of the first sanctuary (Exodus 25: 2-9), and they responded willingly (Exodus 35:21ff.). The granting of the outward symbol of God’s presence is accompanied from the start, therefore, by a spirit of willing self-sacrifice.
… In Ezra, the point of bringing together the community’s early concern for purity, and its corresponding enjoyment of blessing, is to aria again that there is in this new situation a new opportunity. There is irony when this passage (vv. 64-67) is placed alongside Haggai 1: 7-11, which pictures the people, only a few years after this, impoverished because it has ceased to care for precisely those things which mark it out as God’s (represented by the Temple). There may be a hint of the disappointing performance that is to come in the notice that only some of the heads of families gave willingly. Our author continues to make it clear that the fulfillment of prophecy and the enjoyment of God’s blessing are always provisional, and need to be fed by whole-hearted obedience. Otherwise gain can so easily return to loss.
The chapter is dominated in the end, however, by a sense of excitement at a new opportunity – an opportunity which exists because God’s mercies are ‘new every morning’ (Lamentations 3:23).
Soli Deo Gloria!