40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Nehemiah 10:32-12:43 (Episode 370)

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Some fencing of the Law takes place as the people make a covenant. We are given a long list of the leaders in Jerusalem. And the wall is finally dedicated in a grand affair with great rejoicing. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: Join the 1517 Academy Freedom Lessons Street Team Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment by Bradley Gray More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there and everything else that is going on over there. So many things going on. Daily articles. We've got new academies that are now open.

You can sign up for them. You want to learn about faith and reason, that relationship? Sign up for that academy. It's available. You can watch all the conference videos. You can go over there and check out the events page. You've got to see where Chad's going to be speaking. You've got to see if he's going to be near you,

which happens more and more, Chad, nowadays, is because you've got that events page going on. It doesn't necessarily, isn't one of our events, but one of us is speaking somewhere, and I don't know if you've had this happen, is people have been looking at that events page and then signing up for certain churches or camps or whatever it is, and coming on out.

So you never know. Chad could be down the street from you speaking somewhere, and you wouldn't even know it unless you went over to the events page and said, hey, is there anybody from 1517 anywhere near me? Let's check it out. So go and take advantage of all that. we are in Nehemiah chapter 10. We are right around verse 32. Last episode,

you know, we had some people decide that they were going to make a covenant, you know, hey, and we're not going to make any old covenant. We're going to sign this thing. For whatever reason, right before we started recording this, Chad and I were talking about treaties, you know, we were talking about some treaties that, you know, people made with the Native Americans back in the day, and how these treaties were not exactly covenants, we'll say. A lot of treaty breaking going on there. No one's taking these treaties seriously. This part, we didn't get into this last episode, but there is something weird about what's going on here. I think that you can miss this. There are some people, they're going to do the, you know, they got some obligations to

this covenant and whatnot, but this was not like something that God said, here's what I need you to do, and then we can start over. What I want you to do is to write some stuff down, some promises, and then I'm going to need a whole mess of people to sign it, and then I'll accept that as a good faith document, and we can get this thing going. This does seem like, and I don't want to read too much into it, but this does seem sort of like man's solution to things, as opposed to just doing, as opposed to just hearing, believing. You say, you know what, God? Check this out. We're going to be very serious here. And they do some things that they don't really need to do. I think they do some things that God looks at and is like, well, I'm not really asking you to do

that, or I don't think this really applies to you. And it's some of this stuff that you see in the New Testament with the Pharisees, where they enact some laws to keep you from getting anywhere near breaking the law. And I understand the concern that people have, the leaders have, like, we don't want to get anywhere near where our forefathers were, we don't want to repeat that stuff. This is probably—surprise, surprise, by the way, this doesn't work—but this is probably not how that is accomplished. You should probably stick with talking about the goodness and mercy of god because that might keep you close to him yeah i think that's one of the things about uh especially these later biblical books it's pretty easy to miss just because something is described

as happening even something very religious happening does not necessarily mean that what happened was something that god wanted to happen or that god said should happen many times these are just prompted by the people's desire and i'm not questioning their desire but prompted by their desire to walk in the ways of the torah and sometimes the way this was accomplished was by okay taking uh a law that's from the torah but that was really no longer able to be followed in its literal sense because the situation had changed i mean centuries had passed right yeah we all know that i mean you look at the laws say from the 19th century or the 18th century or the 16th century or whatever well a lot of times those laws have to be changed have to be updated

they have to be modernized because situations change well you had laws given to the israelites by moses and they entered the promised land for instance you had the canaanites perizzites hyvites jebusites all these peoples and there were various laws that were connected with them what happens when they're no longer around i mean you just like see these laws as historically applicable but no longer applicable to the here and now or as we see happening here do we take these laws and say you know what let's just kind of adapt them and modernize them and even expand them to our current situation yeah so a lot of what's happening in ezra nehemiah is is that and to piggyback off off what you were saying that same thing continues and this is what we see

happening especially with the building of the fence around the commandments we have all of these well what at that time were oral traditions oral laws of the jews that were prom promulgated by people like the pharisees uh and these were yeah they were taking elements of the law and expanding it modernizing it and uh and and taking it beyond what was actually written to keep people from actually getting to the commandment and and breaking it so i mean it's a complicated process and i understand like i said the motivation i'm not saying there was a wrong motivation here. I'm saying, though, that don't take things like this treaty or other things like the whole breaking up of marriages that we talked about with Ezra. Don't take that just because it's

in the Bible as if this was the thing to do, and God was like, rah, rah, rah, in heaven when these people were doing this. It's just what the people were doing. Yeah. Also, what ends up happening when you do this, it might have some effect that you're after, but the effect that it certainly won't have, is it will not make you keep the law, because what this actually ends up doing is it distorts the law, because you get, the more you do this, the further and further away you get from the heart of the law, right? So you start like, okay, I'm going to take the letter of the law right here, and I don't want to get anywhere near that, so we're going to outlaw this, this, this four steps away and that fourth step away probably has nothing to do with the intent of

the original law right and so this is a it doesn't help you actually obey the law because it kind of at this point doesn't have much to do with the law right right and it can um easily take on in the perception of people a divine quality oh well you know this thing that's four steps removed from god's actual law is a divine law well no no it's a fence maybe it's the fourth fence out from well you can see this with the sabbath like you have the sabbath day and you get to the point by the time jesus is around where there are those who will say uh does your baby weigh 15 pounds don't pick them up on the sabbath now let me tell you this is so far from the heart of the Sabbath? You're running in the opposite direction. You're like, I don't want to work.

I think picking up my 15-pound baby on the Sabbath is work, so I'm not going to do that. And now you've broken the command to love your neighbor, because probably your baby needs you to pick them up, right? So you've created a law to keep from breaking the law that probably makes you break a different law. We see that all over the place with Jesus and healings on the Sabbath, right that's one of the reasons that he healed on the sabbath it was it's kind of a and in your face what's more important this oral law that you've come up with which prohibits healing on the sabbath which of course is nowhere in the torah god nowhere prohibits healing on the sabbath so which is more important your oral law this fence you built around it or loving your neighbor and

exemplifying that love by actually healing this person on the sabbath yeah so i mean it's a don't we see this happening all the time especially in legalistic circles where love gets love gets diminished and the laws get elevated yeah to where really what matters is keeping these laws these principles almost all of which are nothing more than what people have come come up with and again i'm not questioning motivations uh but we should always question fences around the law because these fences are erected by people's opinions in order to well do whatever control themselves control control other people and it what it leads to this proliferation of laws leads to a life in which yeah you're surrounded by these these prohibitions most of which are man-made

and you can't therefore live in the freedom of the gospel yeah yeah you're always wondering am i doing enough? Am I avoiding enough to stay on God's good side? That's a little preface to this, but it's important. Yeah, that's why Jesus comes around and says, let me boil this back down for you. Love the Lord your God, love your neighbor as yourself. Let's reduce this down to these two things. I think if you do these two things, which of course you're not doing, but maybe just focus right here if you want to know what this is really all about yeah that's that's where we need to be that's where the law is leading us so we were introduced to last week to uh for instance not giving our daughters to the peoples of the land or taking their daughters for our sons that's verse 30

uh verse 31 is the sabbath day you got gentiles coming in on the sabbath to sell stuff and we're going to come back to this in the last chapter of nehemiah and so uh we're not going to buy from them i'm not going to buy from them on the sabbath or a holy day and we're also going to forego sow the crops on the sabbatical year. Now, verse 32 says, we also, so the people signing this treaty, this covenant, we also take upon ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of God. Why would they need that? The showbread, the regular grain offering, the burnt offering, the Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, the sin offering to make atonement for Israel and for all the work of the house of God.

now this is a this is a great example because nowhere in the torah is there an obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of god there is uh when there is a census taken yeah there's there's money that's collected you can read about that uh back in uh exodus chapter chapter 30 but what's happened here is they're coming up and i'm not saying this is right or wrong but they are obligating themselves and others to basically contribute this this third part of a shekel in order to make sure that the temple has enough money in order to continue operations so it'd be this would be basically like if your local congregation got together in a congregational meeting and said you know what we're going to

make a pact with each other that choose a number, 2%, 5%, 10% of our income is going to go to the church to make sure that the pastors have a salary or that the teachers have a salary or that there's plenty of money for the upkeep of the building, charitable concerns, whatever it might be. And everyone is obligated to do this, even though it's not in the Bible anywhere. That's kind of what's going on here uh now this is we we hear this the same kind of discussion later on this is what is what comes up in matthew chapter 17 remember that story when you know the the people come to peter and they say hey you know does your teacher not pay the temple tax that's what this is that's what that that scenario was talking about so it changed over time says go fishing

yeah jesus says to peter well you know once you toss your hook in the water and the first fish you catch open its mouth and there's there's your tax i wish jesus still did that i mean the taxes i'd go fishing if jesus would put some gold coins in the mouth of a fish i can't if there were gold coins in the in the mouth of fish i would be uh i'd have a lot more poles in my garage yeah i would too yeah i'd be uh i'd be on the bank of the river quite quite a bit but anyway that's the background of this uh so that's part of the obligations that they place on each other to make sure that there's plenty of money coming in for the servants of the house of God.

And here's another thing. Verse 34, we the priests, Levites, people, have likewise cast lots for the wood offering. That's kind of interesting because the Bible never talks about, back in the Torah, never talks about a wood offering. What's a wood offering? I mean, you've got animal offerings, you've got drink offerings. Well, the wood offerings are those that are to be brought

to the house of god according to our father's houses at times appointed year by year to burn on the altar of the lord our god as it is written on in the law now this is a this is a classic example of what we're talking about there there is a law uh which stipulates i believe it's in leviticus 6 there is a law which stipulates that the fire on the altar shall be kept burning it shall not go out okay so we have that but nothing is said about how that's to be done presumably the gibbonites and the other servants you know the heroes of wood and the drawers of water they took care of that well they're not around anymore so now they come up with this system whereby kind of divvy it up and they're responsible various people various families various groups

for bringing the quote-unquote wood offering to make sure that the altar has enough there but it's not required in the laws of moses never nowhere does it say hey this is this is what we should do this is just what they what they come up with now verse 35 takes us 35 all the way through 37 basically is saying we're also going to bring the first fruits first fruits the ground of every fruit tree year by year and uh we're going to bring the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle Of course, the firstborn of the humans would have been redeemed. You offer a sacrifice for them. That's kind of the background of what's happening with Jesus in Luke chapter 2.

So you have the firstborn of sons and our cattle, firstborn of our dough, fruit, wine, oil. All of this we're going to bring to the priest as well as to the Levites. The Levites are scattered throughout the country. This is a small part of the country that the Israelites are still inhabiting. And so they're going to bring these in. And verse 38 says that when the Levites collect this in the towns, there's going to be a priest with them. And then what happens with the Levites is so the people give the Levites this stuff. And then the Levites give a tithe of that tithe.

So the Levites are collecting all this from the regular Israelites. And then as their tithes, and then the Levites take this and then they take a tenth or a tithe of that. and they pass it on to to the priest in order that basically everything happening at the temple may continue to happen because you know this was a big operation even though it was going to get even bigger as time went on it was still a big operation you got you got to provide sacrifices you got you got lambs you got oxen you got doves you got a lot of sacrifices you got oil you got wine you have to have uh things to take care of the priest and the levites and the singers and the musicians So this is a—it's not a business, so don't think of it that way, but it is a large enough organization, let's say, at the temple to require quite a bit of income coming in.

Yeah, I mean, just imagine if you had all of the equivalent of this much stuff going on at your local church all day, every day, right? You'd be like, we've got to increase the staff here. This is nuts. we have a we have a budget meeting we're gonna have to increase our our budget uh from whatever it is to uh you know another hundred thousand or whatever it might be yeah it's a lot going on and the only way all these things going on continue to go on is by the israelites contributing because even though it does seem as if initially the uh the persian leadership were contributing some to kind of get this going probably over time that that that dwindled and so you're left with the necessity of providing everything that was needed for the sacrifices and for the upkeep of the of

the temple so this is this is uh the the pact the treaty the covenant call it what you want that they made with each other these are and maybe there were some other stipulations but these are the ones that are spelled out for us some involve the sabbath some involve marriages some involved uh the temple most of them involved most of them involved the kind of the practicalities of of the temple so the people i mean to their credit they are serious about not neglecting the house of god they want to make sure not only that they get things started but that once they do it's able to continue because this is the house of god this is where yahweh is worshiped and this is his holy city as we're going to hear in the next chapter so uh they were wanting to make sure

that nothing got in the way of the worship that was to take place and that they all wanted to take place at the temple in jerusalem and i think we're ready to uh to jump into into the next chapter now the next chapter is going to be very brief very brief in our coverage of it let me put it that way. The chapter itself is, let's see, 36 verses. But it's one of these chapters that's pretty characteristic of books like Chronicles and books like Ezra and Nehemiah, where you have a whole lot of lists with a whole lot of people's names, various categories of the people. And a lot of this seems to be just included to make sure that there's a full representation of all those who are involved in this almost seems like just almost an administrative type list

these are the people this is where they lived these are the tribes want to make sure that we get this down in writing number one to show who they were and also then for posterity so it's a concern to make sure for the historical record that we know who these people were where they lived, which tribe they were, how many there were, in order that we can, number one, be appreciative of everything they did to make this possible, but also just to preserve their memory for future generations. You have to remember, you're not in the book of Isaiah here, where, you know, you're writing down words from God and stuff. This is a record, and it reads like that. And it reads like that, yes. So one of the first things that we hear in chapter 11, before all the names begin,

is that there was a need to make sure that jerusalem was sufficiently populated by people so as to be able to defend it so you can't i mean it doesn't do any good to build a wall and to have a city if you don't have enough people there to defend it or enough people there to make sure that the city is prosperous and so what they do is they cast lots and basically there was a tithe of the people one out of 10 were chosen by these lots to live in jerusalem the holy city while nine of 10 remained in the other towns so however i'm not sure how this worked but they cast lots and the way it uh it turned out was that yeah one out of every 10 moved into jerusalem that was going to be their place everybody else lived in the villages around jerusalem or in that

that region so there was going to be enough people living there in order to uh defend jerusalem in order to make sure the city continued to grow and to and to prosper and then what begins to happen is in the rest of the chapter is you have a lot of names that are listed here uh you have the sons of judah and the sons of benjamin listed there by name you have the priests that are listed uh you have the levites that are listed gatekeepers overseers of the levites and then toward the end of the chapter you hear about the villages and their fields and some of the people of judah who lived in these villages such as kuryoth arba and uh beersheba ziklag all these various places and those are usually divided between two different groups the people of judah

and the people of benjamin because remember most of the the other 10 tribes either ended up being taken into exile or they were absorbed into the tribes of judah and benjamin they basically fled south when the assyrians destroyed the north and they continued to live with the two tribes of judah and benjamin so even though you know remnants of people from the the 10 tribes continued uh the the biggest tribes that were left were the tribe of judah and the tribe of benjamin and that's chapter 11. is that a record have we have we ever covered a chapter that quickly that's got i mean that's if it's not a record it's close i mean i can't think of what is there some super short chapter uh that just has you know three verses 34 names in it or something

yeah yeah so uh that that that's chapter 11. now chapter 12 is at least the beginning part of chapter 12 is is similar um we start out with a more list more names and the first list are the priest so these are the priest and the levites who came up with zerubbabel that takes us back it takes us back to the first groups that are coming over after the persians defeat the uh babylonians so these are the priest levites who came with zerubbabel the son of shealtiel and yeshua and then we have them listed there now the number that's listed here there's only 22 names either there were a couple of names that weren't listed or maybe they were continuing to grow but we do know that by the time of the first century these were the 24 priestly divisions

so the way it worked in the first century just for those who might not know say uh you were a priest around the time of jesus well where'd you live what'd you do well you likely there were some but likely you did not live in jerusalem you lived in jericho or you lived somewhere else and you were in one of these 24 orders of priests that were divided up according to these these families of these clans and where you lived you had your job or you had your land you know maybe you were a armor maybe you were whatever it might be your vocation vocation was well then when your turn came up when it was your orders your divisions turn then you travel to jerusalem and you stay there a couple weeks you did your duties you know whatever that might involve around the temple you

worked there and then when your time was up what'd you do well you went back home so that's that's a background of course of the parable of the uh of the good samaritan the priest has finished his tour of duty in jerusalem and he's going down from jerusalem to jericho and we know that jericho was a big home for for priest so he's on he's on his way back he's on his way back he was one of one of the priests in one of these 24 orders who had done his time of service and now he's going back to to his home that's the way that's just just the way it worked in the first century so don't kind of get this picture of jerusalem just being full of thousands of priests and they're all kind of working 365 days a year at the temple that they it did not work that way yeah and that

particular priest uh really misses the whole uh point of ceremonial cleanliness as he is like ooh potential corpse but maybe not could be alive not gonna find out because uh don't want to be touching any dead things not going to gamble on that yeah i think i i think you've really uh this i think you've really missed the heart of the law on this one yeah the that parable has a lot of messages but that is definitely a uh a primary message when it comes to the priest and the levite yeah yeah when you're uh when your ritual when you're concerned for ritual purity trumps any any uh move toward compassion then you know you're getting you're getting things wrong you might you You might have over-fenced that law at that point.

I might have over-fenced the law, yeah. So that's verses 1 through 7. Verses 8 and 9 give us a list of Levites. And some of these names are familiar from some of the other lists that we've encountered in Ezra and Nehemiah. Now verse 10 is interesting because verse 10 is going to introduce us to the high priest family, at least to some of those who uh who served over over time so we've got uh yeshua the father of jehoiakim jehoiakim the

father of elisha of elisha the father of jehoiada and so on and so forth so this was basically father to son and then that son grew up he became a father and then his son would take over the high priesthood and that that's the way that it was supposed to work now one of the things that i think is is worth pointing out is that it did not continue to work that way so that the way this was supposed to work the way it was set up is of course to aaron from aaron and went to his son and then from his son to the grandson great-grandson this was it was a hereditary office the high priesthood was and at least at this point in in the time of nehemiah does seem to still be functioning that way it did not continue to do so so if you know anything about the intertestamental period in

particular the the time of the maccabees which uh began uh the middle of the second century so we'll say the 160s bc as soon as the maccabees revolt rebelled against uh their their overlords greeks syrians whatever you want to call them and then eventually won their independence then what began to happen is whoever the Maccabeean ruler was at the time, he also served as high priest. Which was not allowed by the Torah.

You weren't supposed to be king and priest at the same time. Only two guys. Maybe one guy. There's a lot to do that. Jesus and Melchizedek. Is it two guys? Is it one guy?

You'll have to go listen to our episode on that. You can hear Chad and I disagree. but point is uh not just anyone yes not just anyone certainly not these maccabean rulers but that is what happened and then it got even worse so once uh once the romans came in and they were able to annex judea basically take over after this one about 100 year period of uh of independence on the part of the jews under the maccabees so once the romans came in then uh well think about it who do the romans want to be the high priest someone they can control right so they're not going to appoint someone who's super strong very independent no they're going to appoint someone

who is going to do what they want to be done and so what you begin to have happening in the high priesthood is people are jockeying for position or they're buying the priesthood and that's so by By the time you get to the first century, the high priesthood has been corrupted to the point of where it's a bought and sold office or something, an office to which whoever's in charge in Rome is appointing people in order to make sure that they're able to control as much as they can the people under the influence of the high priest. So it's a gradual devolving of the high priesthood that we see over time. But at least in Nehemiah 1210, we have a list of these high priests. that are that are placed there and then in verse 12 and following basically we have uh more list of more more names heads of fathers houses priest and so on and so forth so that takes us through verse 26 and i'm gonna not say anything more about that unless something you want to add down

nope okay so if you're still with us if you're uh if you're waiting in in you know anticipation for the example that is to come well that's where we are now so we are finally after all this time going to dedicate the wall so if most most people if they know anything about nemi they know that nemi built the wall in jerusalem we oversaw the work and well it's done and what do you know when you put a lot of work into something it takes some time and it takes a lot of organization and and there's sacrifices that are made, and you finally get it done, what are you going to do? You celebrate.

You dedicate whatever this object is or this building is that you've worked so hard to construct, and that's what's going to happen here with verse 27 and following. Yeah, I think the one thing to say, I guess, about getting up to this dedication to the wall and getting all these people organized and writing all this stuff down, the one takeaway from that is that probably didn't happen in an afternoon uh so like what you gotta think is that like as we've like breezed through all this because it's

a bunch of names about a bunch of people you know having to do a bunch of things and stuff no doubt this took a little doing and uh and so the dedication of the wall is sort of this culmination not just of course the wall being done but you have all these other things that have been set in place i mean it's almost like you're ready to uh put the key in the ignition of like restarting everything like we've got all the things in place and it's we've got the people in place and everyone understands what their job is and we've all made these you know these vows and these promises and like we're gonna like now let's do it now it's time to start the engine and get this thing running yeah and you gotta i mean it's granted it's kind of overwhelming to have

all these names and all these these very deep these detailed things kind of thrown at us but keep in mind to every single one of these names represents a real person who was really involved in this work whether they were a builder whether they were a priest whether they are levi whether they were a musician you know whether they were a guard at the temple flesh and blood person is represented by that name that god was placing there to do that kind of work you know to make sure that those bricks were laid to make sure that the trumpet was blown to make sure the animal was sacrificed so and thanks be to god that he used all of these people that are listed for us to bring us then to the point like you say where you put the key in the ignition and you're ready

to go so verse 27 says at the dedication of the wall of jerusalem they they got these levites in their places and they they brought them to jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness thanksgiving singing cymbals harps and lyres so this isn't to be kind of a silent march to the streets it's not even going to be like a march to the streets with singing it's going to be it's going to be celebration you got to have music got the whole band out there you gotta get the band out there i mean this is a this is a huge deal and it's it's not somber there's nothing somber about this. This is a joyous occasion. So you got to kind of picture up a party atmosphere here. You got the band going, you got people singing, you got people marching, people are

coming in from out of town. This is a big deal. So you got the sons of the singers. They gather to gather, gather together from the district around Jerusalem and from the villages. It lists them there for us. Everybody is coming to Jerusalem. And the priests and Levites, they make sure that everybody's ritually pure they purify themselves they purify the people they even somehow we're not told how purified the gates and the wall maybe this involves sprinkling of water we're just really not told but anyway they they ritually bathe themselves no doubt they wash their clothes they made sure that they stayed ritually pure they purified gates and walls don't they don't touch any bodies along the way as they as they traveled over there

yeah if you're coming to jerusalem and there's a guy who's left half dead just yeah cross the other side don't get keep walking don't even get close to him we got it we got a party to get to here right so uh what does nehemiah do well he says i brought the leaders of jerusalem this is his uh first person singular we're back to that now i nehemiah speaking i got all these guys together and he says i pointed two choirs so what's going to happen is you're going to get two groups of people nehemiah is going to lead one of these and ezra is going to lead the other them and they're going to they're going to walk they're going to process at times it seems on top of the wall and then at other times probably off the wall we're not given enough details to be able

tell precisely what happened and where they went but you got two bands two groups celebrating ezra's leading one nehemiah's leading another they're kind of going separate directions one clockwise one counterclockwise and they're going to end up at the temple so they're dedicating the wall they can end up at the temple so one goes south to uh the dung gate on the wall to the dung gate and half of the leaders of Judah, and we have their names listed there. They go with him. They got the trumpets,

they got the musical instruments of David, the man of God, as it says in verse 36. Of course, David is, when we first meet David, our first impression of him is that he's actually, he's a musician.

I mean, before he's a soldier, before he's all the other things he became, he's a musician. He's a harpist. He's really good with a slingshot. yeah i mean he's multi-talented guy yeah and a shepherd yeah and a ladies man david was a man of man of many talents but yeah he's a music man and of course he's connected with almost half of the psalms in one way or another so you got david the music man who uh

we learned in chronicles kind of set up this organization of the various levitical choirs and this this huge complex of singers he organized that so anyway you got these two groups ezra's with one nehemiah's with the other and the one that nehemiah's with they're going to go to the north and he's got half the people with with him and then in verse 38 we have you know some of the places listed where they went tower of the ovens broad wall gate of ephraim gate of yashana fish gate these various towers but they culminate in verse 40 when both choirs give thanks to the lord when they're standing in the house of god now verse 43 is a great uh great way to kind of wrap up this section because it says five different times joy or rejoicing is mentioned it says they

offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced for god had made them rejoice with great joy the women and children also rejoiced and in case you didn't catch it the first four times the joy of jerusalem was heard far away a lot of happy people you got a picture uh jerusalem just kind of almost vibrating with the excitement of all this stuff going on. I mean, it's a huge deal for them because this has been a long time coming. A lot of work, a lot of time of waiting for this to finally culminate in today. And I think it's also for them, just nationally, such a big deal because of everything they've gone through.

I mean, this city was in rubble after the Babylonians came through. And it stayed like that for all those decades. well they finally came back they finally got the temple rebuilt but the wall was in ruins so finally nehemiah gets there and he gets everything organized and get the wall built gets everything else organized with the priest the levites to make this this pact and everything and so this is kind of the the icing on the cake if you will for everything that has been been going on so i don't know what to compare it to but uh it for for the israelites in a way this is a huge day because it's as if now they can finally be at peace and be secure and feel like they're kind of at a

a state where they can actually be okay for for a while be safe be worshiping be with their families be doing what the people of god are are meant to do yeah the thing that's cool about this is that, you know, about this rejoicing, is that why do you rejoice? You rejoice because God made them rejoice. Now, this isn't like forced rejoicing. It's not like, God is forcing everyone to rejoice now. It's that they're rejoicing because what God has done forces this response of joy and rejoicing, which is cool because, you know, if we did that much work, we might rejoice in what we've done. We might be like, why are you rejoicing? Well, obviously, look at what we did. We've really done something here. We should be really happy. We're very pleased with

ourselves. But this is not what happens. They said that they're rejoicing because God has made them rejoice. And so there is this acknowledgement, while, of course, they did a lot of work, that this is God's work, that God is the one who has allowed this to happen, that He's the reason and that this is the way it is. Yeah, which is what parades and Thanksgiving is all about anyway. We're acknowledging that all of this is you. All of this is a gift from you. You're the one who orchestrated all the events

that allowed us to return from exile. You protected us. You've given us people like Nehemiah, people like Ezra. You've given us all these things, and the culmination of them is the construction of this wall around the Holy City. so yeah it's a big thanksgiving to the god who is the giver of all of all good gifts and i think we will wrap up we'll stop there now we don't have much more to go we're at the very end of nehemiah

12 and there's only 13 chapters in nehemiah so one more episode on nehemiah and then we've got a very very interesting book coming up next the book of esther so we're almost ready to start something new. Well, one way or another, Chad, we're going to wrap up Nehemiah next week. Will it be a longer episode? I don't know. We'll see how we do, but we're committed. We're going to get to the end of Nehemiah next week so we can get into

a book that feels unlike anything that we've encountered thus far. Yeah, very, very different kind of biblical book. It'll be fun, though. Looking forward to it. Absolutely. All right, man. Well, I'll see you next week for the conclusion. All right. We'll see you then.

We'll see you next time.