Day 272 (Nehemiah 11-13, Psalm 126) - Year 4
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Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee 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,

When we read that passage today, it's easy to be like, blah, blah, blah, get on with 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. We'll link to an article about this in the show notes. And by the way, in this same spot earlier this year, they recovered an ancient seal used by King David's son. We'll link to an article about that too.

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. Meaning,

Meanwhile, remember Tobiah, 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, Tobiah 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 Tobiah'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.

While they're all up to their old sins, they also circle back around to marrying people who don't love Yahweh. They're having children with those people, and they aren't teaching their children about Yahweh and his ways either. This was the biggest problem of all for Nehemiah, because this has indefinite consequences. With this, he can't just lock a gate and solve things. This will impact generations. He's angrier than we've seen him in the whole book so far. Back when Tobiah and Samballot were taunting him, he just ignored them and kept working. But this time...

When God's people are rebelling against the covenant they made with God, Nehemiah takes matters into his own hands. Literally. He takes hair, their hair, into his own hands. He curses at them and beats some of them up physically and pulls out their hair. Then he makes them promise that they'll knock it off. He reminds them how this has gone poorly in the past, even with some of their most noteworthy ancestors like Solomon. He knows how this story ends.

and had rather get into a few fistfights hoping to stop it than see the demise of Israel as a nation. Scripture doesn't defend or rebuke Nehemiah's violence. It sounds like righteous anger for sure, but it's hard to know exactly which of his actions were God's directives. He seems to have a clear conscience about it, though, because he keeps asking God to remember that he did these things, that he cared about justice and obedience. And he asked God to remember what the people have done as well. Psalm 126 is a song praising God for bringing restoration to the people of Israel.

Their mouths are filled with shouts of joy. We saw that today when their praise could be heard from far away. But even the psalm acknowledges that there are still things yet to be restored. And in all of today's reading, we saw that the people have had everything given back to them, but they're still the same people. Nothing much has really changed. They've just moved a few times. But no matter where they go, they take their same stone hearts with them. They need the new hearts of flesh God promised them.

What was your God shot today? Mine was during their praise service at the dedication of the new wall. In 1243, it says, they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced for God had made them rejoice with great joy. Here's what I love about that verse. It says God made them rejoice with great joy. How did he do that? Did he legislate it? Did he force them to rejoice with great joy? Did he threaten them with punishment if they weren't filled with great joy?

You can't force someone to have joy. You could maybe force someone to act joyful, but you can't force them to be joyful. So when it says that God made them rejoice with great joy, it's a testament to his work on them at a heart level. He produces a joy in them that they wouldn't have otherwise. Yes, they've still got miles to go, but don't we all? Yes, they still fail and break his laws, but their hearts know deep down that he's where the joy is.

Tomorrow we'll be reading and finishing the book of Malachi, our final book of the Old Testament. It's four chapters long. We're linking to a short video in the show notes to give you a quick overview before you read. Check it out if you've got seven minutes to spare. Not everyone's quiet time looks the same. Sometimes they aren't quiet at all. I actually refer to my quiet time as priority time because that's what helps me remember the place it holds in my schedule and in my life.

If you're new to this or if you just want to add more tools to your toolkit in case you find them helpful, I'd love to share more about what My Priority Time looks like. We've built out a PDF that we're offering for free, and if you want to get access to our free Priority Time Toolkit, all you have to do is go to thebiblerecap.com forward slash time and submit your email address. That's thebiblerecap.com forward slash time, like quiet time, but without the quiet.