40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Nehemiah 13:1-31 (Episode 371)

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

Chad and Daniel finish the book of Nehemiah in this episode. Tobiah is living in the temple and Nehemiah isn't happy about it. The Levites are having to work in the fields. The Sabbath isn't being kept. Nehemiah addresses all of this and asks God to remember him for good. Have a listen! Show Notes: 1517 Podcast Network Survey 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 and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you sign up for some of those new academies that are dropping. The Faith and Reason one is now all edited up and ready for you to sign up to take it. So you can do that. We've got one on patristics coming out soon. A lot of academy work getting done.

So take those for free. If you want to support 1517 and the work that we do here, including this podcast, you can, of course, click the Donate link that says Support this Show in the show notes or go to 1517 and go to the Donate page, and you can become a supporter. We're very grateful for those of you who have done that and continue to do that. It makes all that we do possible. Chad, today we are going to wrap up the book of Nehemiah. So we're going to do that.

And here's the thing. Nehemiah, the end of Nehemiah, as you wrap this up, it is sort of not just the ending of a book, but as we go into the next book, it really is like sort of the end of things that seem like they're just flowing in chronological order, and you know where we've been, and there's like, you're just following this history. Next week, we're going to get into something that seems like a pretty radical break from that. So it's not just the end of Nehemiah, but this is sort of an ending of sort of this part of Scripture. Yeah, yeah, Nehemiah's wrapping up that Old Testament period. I mean, we talk about the intertestamental period really next.

I mean, yeah, we have prophets who are kind of filling some of the historical gaps, like malachi but yeah as far as like the history books go this is it yeah so uh yeah i mean well there are there's about a there's a about a century where we don't we don't know much about what's going on with the jews at all and then we start you know learning a few things uh with alexander the great and uh everything happening happening with him but yeah i mean as far as like the biblical what you think of as the the history of israel in the old testament yeah nehemiah is going to take us to just about the the end of that so one more chapter to go and it's a it's kind of an anticlimactic chapter in some ways because you know we had the big celebration

we made the wall we built the wall we uh we had the march around the wall we had the celebration at the completion of the wall and most people when they think of nehemiah if they know anything about the book is like yeah isn't that the guy that built the wall yeah that's that's him but Of course, Nehemiah did some other things, and he had some other problems. I was thinking about this this morning. I went for a walk and opened my YouVersion Bible app, which is how I like to listen to audio versions of the Bible. And I just started listening to Nehemiah from beginning to end. I will confess, I skipped over some of the genealogies.

But the rest of it, all the narrative parts, I listened to. And I was thinking, you know, it's a, uh, Nehemiah, he had two problems. He had one internal, one external. The external problem was pretty obvious. That's why they built the wall, right? Yeah. You got Tobiah, you got Sanballat, you got all these people who are wanting to have a defenseless Jerusalem so that they can control it.

They don't want a strong city. So of course they're mocking, they're jeering, they're threatening to attack. They're working in sinister undercover sorts of ways with their contacts within the city. So you got you got that problem, external problem, but you got a lot of internal problems. I mean, he's got a lot of issues with his own people. We've encountered some of those already with the lending practices, and we're going to hear more about these in this last chapter. You're going to have problems about the Sabbath. You're going to have problems about Tobiah, who's been one of the biggest burrs under the saddle for Nehemiah.

He's like when Nehemiah leaves for a short time, he's going to move into the temple. Nehemiah comes along, kind of like Jesus starts throwing stuff around in the temple, cleaning that out. And, you know, you got a lot of issues, is my point, in Nehemiah 13. So if anything else, the end of this book reminds me that it doesn't matter how many agreements the Israelites come to, how many times they're like, yes, we're going to take care of God's house, or yes, we're going to keep the law, or yes, we're going to do this, we're going to do this.

They always fail. it's every single time that they say we're going to do a b and c they end up not doing a b and c and if nothing else it drives home the point and this is kind of my my takeaway when i finished the book on my walk this morning you know you can you can do the law however much you want to you can strive to keep it you can add to it you can do whatever you want to do that involves you doing the doing and ultimately you're always going to end up the same place failure because of course you can't yeah i mean that is one of the takeaways of nehemiah it is it were doubles down on the fact that something better is needed someone better is needed yeah yeah

doing better doing better covenant and uh the one who's actually going to come and keep the law for us uh the messiah yeah i mean it's it what's true is that like no matter what god does for you I was in Matthew 9 yesterday, and you have Jesus heal these blind guys, and then he tells them, strictly, that's what it says, strictly tells them. Strictly commanded them. Yeah. Keep their mouth shut, right? Tell no one about this, and it says, and they immediately went out and spread his fame throughout the district. i thought to myself you know it doesn't really matter like what god does for you

you're still lousy at obeying him got your eyesight back jesus is like listen i got just one thing i'm gonna ask you to do just kind of keep this undercover i can't do it go out in the street guess what jesus did for me spreading the word yeah so that's uh as far as nehemiah's story goes i i do kind of like the way it ends, with all these problems he has to solve and address, because it just goes to show, you know, the law is good and holy, but we're not. And so the law can say all it wants, and we can come up with these, you know, fences around the law, but ultimately it's not going to justify us because we need something much better. Anyway, let's get to the first issue. So Nehemiah 13,

on that day we're not told what day uh just kind of non-specific but this day they uh they read from the bible they read from the book of moses in the hearing of the people presumably this was deuteronomy because of what we're about to hear so they read from deuteronomy and they found that in this book in the scroll it was written that no ammonite or moabite should ever enter the assembly of god why because they did not meet the people of israel with bread and water but hired balaam against them to curse them and that's a that's a blast from the past yes throwback there back in numbers yeah so hired balaam against him to curse them yet our god turned the curse into a blessing so if you know the story of balaam that's precisely what happened he was a hired

gun but when he started speaking rather than curses blessings came out of his mouth well okay they read this uh from deuteronomy and as soon as the people heard the torah they separated from israel all those of foreign descent now there's more to this in just a second but a couple things i need to point out here um first of all when it says no ammonite or moabite that's important because as we're going to hear in the very next section uh tobiah had moved into the temple and guess where tobiah was from he's from ammon he's an ammonite so that's one of the reasons that's important about no ammonite or moabite with a focus upon the ammonite part entering into the assembly of god now if you go back to to deuteronomy and and you and you look at this

this section that's deuteronomy 23 3 and following it's it's a commentators will debate exactly what is entailed in this it says no ammonite or mobite may enter the assembly of the lord i'm sure we talked about this when we covered this this chapter but what exactly is meant by that because assembly of the lord is used in lots of different ways in uh in the in the Torah itself in Deuteronomy itself and throughout the rest of the bible i mean does this mean you can't be part of israel at all does this mean that you you can't go into the temple does this mean that you can't be part of the the governing body of the jews can't be a full citizen so it's it's it's ambiguous so depending upon the context can be interpreted different ways now in this case what seems to be

happening is they interpret this to mean that you uh you for sure can't go into the sanctuary and i say that because of what is going to be pointed out in verses four four and following so anyway it's a bit ambiguous what that means not not entering to the uh the assembly of of god now keep in mind too that uh you got you got uh i don't call them exceptions but let's see different ways of viewing this because where was ruth from what was ruth was was a moabites right and she definitely entered into the the family of god i mean she married into it she's part of the of course the the genealogy of jesus the messiah so what anyway my takeaway from this is listen if uh if you got an ammonite or moabite and they're worshiping their gods i mean they're fully

ammonite they're fully moabite they're not gonna they're gonna be part of the people of israel you can't have a person like that who is part of a part of israel certainly not entering entering into the temple itself. Now, should they convert, and they leave behind their Ammonite ways, and they leave behind their Moabite ways, and they are fully enveloped into the life of Israel,

well, then they're an Israelite. Well, I think this is what I... Behind the old and embrace the new. Yeah, this is what I was saying. Like, well, if somebody converts, I mean, are they a Moabite anymore? Like, I mean, this is, you know, it's like, I don't know,

my family came to uh america uh after world war one from wales uh i don't go around saying i'm welsh i know you know uh yeah it's and that this is not this is not a religion this isn't just you know this is just nations but the idea here i mean this is important too because you could take this in a really weird way i mean because you could say all right we're going to separate israel from all foreign descent, like, so you'd kick everybody out. What if they're worshiping Yahweh and they're all in, man? I mean, like, this is not—I think this is where you're taking the letter of something, I think, and maybe missing the point of it.

The point is that they always—and you know this because this is the main problem in Israel's history— It's like marrying people and mingling with people who don't worship your God, that's what it is. If they do worship their God, your God, then I don't think there's an issue here. This is not what the law is addressing. Yeah, yeah. The main issue, they're worried about the leaven of idolatry, leavening the loaf of Israel, basically. So you don't want that to happen. So we've encountered this in Ezra and Nehemiah. It's an ongoing issue, and it would continue to be an ongoing issue for the Israelites as they strive to maintain their orthodoxy, we might say, who they were to be, what they were to do, and what they were to believe in the midst of all these peoples around them.

And it became even more of a struggle, of course, when people began to move away from Judea into the Diaspora. So, you know, how are you going to be a Jew if you're living in Egypt or Rome or Asia Minor or wherever it might be? It becomes an ongoing challenge. Let's put it that way. OK, so that just kind of set those first three verses, I think, kind of set the stage for what the real issue was. And this is a particular situation because in verse four, it says, now, before this, so before this, before all this stuff that we just talked about, Eliashib, the priest who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God, who was, get this, related to Tobiah. So you got a family thing going on here. So Tobiah is, he's connected.

I mean, he's married. his wife is part of uh part of israel uh he's he's related to uh to to elijah the priest i mean he's and we we know from other parts of of nehemiah that he's got connections with people in the city well anyway elijah who's over the the chambers related to tobiah well he makes this a nice little apartment for tobiah in the precincts of the temple itself he prepared for to buy a large chamber a little penthouse suite there inside the the temple grounds where previously they had stored the grain offering and the frankincense and the vessels and the tithes of grain and wine and oil which were given by commandment to the levites singers and gatekeepers and the contributions for

the priest so you have this priest who's over this part of the part of the temple he make he that clears everything out let me take out all this holy stuff and uh you know we're going to paint the place put in some nice carpet a little kitchenette there for you and a nice comfortable bed until when you're in town to buy you have a place to stay right here in the in the temple precincts so so how you might be saying well how how did this happen with nehemiah around well he wasn't around that's what it goes on to say while this was taking place i was not in jerusalem it's like nehemiah wants to point out listen this did not happen under my watch he's gonna jump into the narrative and be like by the way i was gone

by the way before you jump to conclusions here listen i was out of town like a long way out of town where well in the 32nd year of artaxerxes king of babylon so this during the final year that he served as as governor as we learned from uh from elsewhere so this is around the around the four thirties, uh, BC. So in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, the king of Babylon, I went to the king. So he'd been in Jerusalem a long time. He'd been a governor. So he's goes to the king.

We're not told why, but he, anyway, he went to the king. And, uh, after some time, we don't know how long he was gone, but after he was, he's there for a while, hanging out with the king, doing whatever it needed to be done, probably official business, I'm guessing. But anyway, uh, after some time he, I asked leave of the king. and came to Jerusalem, and then discovered the evil that Elisha the priest had done for Tobiah, preparing for him a chamber in the courts of the house of our God. And verse 8 will come as no surprise.

I was very angry. Now, knowing Nehemiah as we do, he is a very colorful character. What do you think he did with his anger? What would be his next move? He wrote a sternly worded letter. yeah wrote a sternly worded email and sent it no he uh he goes in and all jesus likes starts throwing stuff around at the temple i threw all the household furniture of tobiah out of the chamber then i gave orders and they cleansed the chambers and i brought back there the vessels of the house

of god with the grain offering and the frankincense so he cleans house literally and and figuratively i mean this is a this goes to show that you know nehemiah did a lot of great work uh made a lot of changes external changes uh enacted a lot of laws but that doesn't solve all the issues i mean this is a family relation the priest is related to tobiah and so nehemiah is out of town the priest is like hey you know we could clear out one of these rooms for you and and you could you could move in and of course tobias is great with that because he wanted to be near so that he could uh work his kind of political connections and have more control over what's going on what's going on in the city so that's the first issue that uh that happens here while while nehemiah's away

yeah it's amazing how quickly uh even you know so you know this is you have a weird kind of uh he's the governor, but he's also, you know, you got authority over what's going on in the religious institutions here. And it's pretty amazing how corrupt those become and how quickly that happens. I mean, like just immediately. I was thinking, when I was studying this this morning,

I was thinking of Mount Sinai. You know, God comes down to make a covenant. Everything God says, we will do. and then uh moses is gone for you know a few days a few weeks up on the mountain it's like nemi is gone he comes back down and uh what lo and behold there's a golden calf people are having a high old time so the uh the the uh the swearing of obedience to the law is short-lived yeah we're we're not we're not good at any of this obviously terrible terrible and if you want a uh very uh practical example of how this works just talk to a lot of people on january 1st find out what the

resolution resolutions are and then talk to those same people on february 1st and see how things are going yes it's an annual reminder of our inability to keep promises laws rules resolutions all those sorts of things which is why obviously as we accent all the time which is why we live by grace and not by laws rules statutes commandments because ultimately those are unkeepable by sinners all right that's the first issue next issue is in verse 10 and following i also found out so this is while he was gone nehemiah probably was not in a good mood when got back all this thing is just everything's falling apart around him i also found out that the portions of the levites had not been given to them so that the levites and the singers

who did the work had fled each to his field why would they flee to the fields because they're hungry that's why they're not like running away because they're scared they're supposed to be it's like it'd be like this listen so you have a pastor and uh all of a sudden he's not getting a paycheck. He's got a family. How long do you think that's going to last? He's got people to take care of, and he's got no paycheck. Well, he's going to find a different place to make money. That's just the way that it's going to work. And same with the Levites here. They're supposed to be paid a paycheck in the sense of they get some of the tithes. Well, if that's not being given to them, well, they got to go to the field. They got to work. They got to be farmers, got to raise

crops they got to feed their feed their families so it's not their fault and that's why i think it's it's important that when nehemiah confronts somebody he didn't confront the levites he didn't say hey what are you guys doing flee into the field no he confronts the officials and it says why is the house of god forsaken now this is uh this is this is important because if you go back to chapter 10 in chapter 10 that's where they had that uh agreement that everybody signed you know we're gonna we're gonna do this we're gonna do that well listen to what they said this is nemi 10 39 we will not neglect the house of our god now the verb there i don't know why esv translated differently but forsaken and neglected is the same verb in hebrew azav so you could translate

this we will not neglect the house of our god then you get to chapter 13 and nehemiah says why is the house of god neglected so neglected same thing in other words they said we're not going to do this and lo and behold that is exactly what they ended up you're probably like what are you talking about we had someone move in there yeah to buy is there it's not forsaken it's fully occupied yeah we had we had a we had a little a bed moved in so somebody could be there so nehemiah jumps into action. He gathered them together, set them in their stations, and then all Judah brought the tithe of grain, wine, oil into the storehouses, and he appointed treasurers over the storehouses. And we have their names listed there, Shalamiah the priest and Zadok the scribe

and Bediah of the Levites. We have assistants, Hanan, and they were all considered reliable, and it was their duty to distribute to their brothers. So first of all, he had to throw the furniture up to buy out and i'm sure he gave a nice tongue lashing to the priest during this this process and then he finds out levites aren't being paid they're hungry they've run off to the fields so he confronts the officials and has to deal with this situation appoint some reliable guys who are going to make sure that the levites get get paid so he's done these two things now we have inserted here in verse 14 a personal prayer and we've seen this one other time i believe it was back in yeah nehemiah 5 and nehemiah 5 19 nehemiah says remember for my good oh my god

all that i've done for this people so that's the first time we have a prayer like this of nehemiah and now we're going to hear it two or three more times in this final chapter here he says remember Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds. It could also be translated as my deeds of loyal love. It's the plural form of chesed that's used here. So my good deeds or my deeds of loyal love or my good works of love, something like that. Do not wipe them out, for I have done that I have done for the house of my God and for his service. so i mean i i like the prayer uh because i think first of all that opening word kind of sets the

tone for the rest of it when he says remember me oh my god he's not saying hey just don't forget but be actively be actively gracious to me as only you can be as you remember what i have done faithfully in my vocation for for your people no it seems like it's this sort of thing i don't think he this isn't a prayer where uh nehemiah is saying hey reward me according to my good deeds but rather i know the things i know that you have cause uh to wipe this all away don't do that you'll wipe out like all this effort that we've put into like we like there is there are in this case it's just him but like i am trying here to do what you would have done uh and don't have the forsakenness of the temple caused you to wipe this all away, right? And so he's acknowledging

that that is a possibility and asking God not to do that. He's like, hey, also, though, not everyone is trying to do that. Right, yeah. Yeah, I don't think we should in any way take this as sort of a bragging, hey, God, look what I've done, you know? I thank you that I'm not like other men, like that priest who invited to the temple it's it's not that are you just saying hey uh remember me i mean that's that's that's the important remember me um and uh and and bless me because of what i'm faithfully trying to do for for the sake of your people all right that's the second issue now we have sabbath problems so verse 15 says in those days so presumably this is still all this was happening while he was gone and it got gradually worse in those days i saw in judah

people treading wine press treading wine presses on the sabbath and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys also wine grapes figs and all kinds of loads which they brought into jerusalem on the sabbath day and i warned them on the day when they sold food so that's the kind of first situation here these are these are his fellow jews who are bearing burdens on the sabbath and uh bringing stuff in jerusalem on on the sabbath they're engaging activities that are not consistent with the day of rest in other words there's a lot of there's a lot of amplification of sabbath laws over over the centuries and of course by the time we get to the first century and even after that if you read if you go and read for instance

the Mishnah or the Talmud, you'll see how the Sabbath laws are down to this minutiae of regulating every single thing that you do on the Sabbath day. But if you read the Old Testament itself, there's not a lot of very specific rules that are focused on activities that you're not supposed to do or are supposed to do on the Sabbath day. The general principle is, hey, it's a day of rest. So don't work and don't make your servants work. Don't make your animals work. so in verse 15 and following that's what's going on here basically just being treated like it's any other day i think that's the the general problem here people are bringing in stuff on their donkeys they're buying and selling and all of this is happening in jerusalem on the sabbath

and not only that but verse 16 says that some phoenicians tyrrhenians so people from tyre the tyre and sodden area who were known uh the phoenicians were known for being big into trading and of course since they lived on the seashore on the mediterranean seashore they had they had ships and they of course were fishing out there and so stands to reason here that the tyrrhenians people of tyre who lived in the city brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on the sabbath to the people of judah in jerusalem itself so nehemiah again has to confront people he confronts here the nobles of judah and says to them what is this evil thing that you are doing profaning the sabbath day did not your fathers act in the same way and did not

our god bring all this disaster on us and on this city and now you are bringing more wrath on israel by profaning the sabbath so we got several different problems going on you got problems with the jews themselves you got problem with the people of people of tyre who are who are selling materials in jerusalem so uh in addition to kind of this verbal confrontation between nehemiah and the and the nobles he goes on to take very practical uh practical measures in order to deal with this verse 19 says as soon as it began to grow dark at the gates of jerusalem before the sabbath so you know toward late friday he would uh he commanded the doors be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the sabbath day so that takes care of people

coming in and out of the city bearing the burdens and and then he also stationed servants at the gate so that no load oh so anyway he stationed servants there no load to be brought in and the merchants and sellers of all the kinds of wares they started kind of camping outside of jerusalem so these people of tyre and probably others too were maybe waiting for a chance to get into the city or maybe hoping that people would come out of the city to buy and sell either the way they're camping out there with all their stuff that they want to sell so nehemiah warns them and says why do you lodge outside the wall this is this next line is so nehemiah if you do it again i'm gonna lay hands on you and this was no vain threat i mean we we know we're gonna we

haven't even got to the hair pulling part that's coming up in a few a few more verses but nehemiah is not a man who's hesitant to go to whatever physical extremes are necessary to make sure that people are not breaking the law. Well, it seems like they know this, too, because, I mean, the very next line is, from that time on, they did not come on the Sabbath.

So Nehemiah's like, hey, you want these hands on you? Like, camp out there again. Camp out there again and see what happens. We're going to throw some hands. That's what happens. What happens with these hands if you camp outside the gate again? It's funny. You might be like, man,

this is like a lot that the other the sabbath is just a day where you're supposed to chill and you're supposed to rest like how bad are you at being like obedient even when god says hey could you do nothing for a day just do nothing i just want you to to rest you know i just want you to have a day off you're like no i can't do that that's sorry that's asking too much yeah the sabbath really is i mean the breaking of the sabbath really is the epiphany of what's wrong with us. We can't even do nothing. No. As soon as

God says do nothing, we're like, well, there will be two things. We try to figure out what something is, and then decide that everything is something. And so you couldn't even eat a fig or pick up your child or anything, because that's all something.

So now you're missing the forest for the trees, big time there. Or you're just like, oh, I can't do nothing. I'm going to do everything. i'm gonna buy and sell i'm gonna load my donkey up yeah i'm gonna do all the things yeah the sap really is the uh the prism through which you can kind of view that rebellious human heart yeah doing nothing that's asking that's asking a lot of us god so uh this section wraps up i command the levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates to keep

the sabbath day holding and then at the very end of 22 we have this second remember uh prayer of nehemiah remember this also in my favor oh my god and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast love i like that one even better yeah remember this also in my favor oh my god and spare me according to the greatness of your chesed of your steadfast love so in the prior when he asked that god would remember his his uh deeds of steadfast love that he was doing on behalf of the people and out of obedience to the laws, and here he's asking that God would remember him and spare him according to the greatness of his own steadfast. And I don't think these prayers are personal, but he's not doing this for personal reasons. To me, this seems like

him saying to God, historically I know that this sort of thing brings your judgment, and what I'm asking you to do is not do that give me a second to try to fix this right it's like he's saying i'm going i'm i'm you know that like what what i have set up i left everything went to crap uh but hold on i don't don't don't bring the judgment yet uh give me some time to fix this yeah getting back again to listening to the whole book this morning it comes becomes pretty clear that dmi really is he's concerned about his people yeah this isn't like a he's not ambitious to make a name for himself this is all this is concerned for for his people i mean he could have stayed back with the king being uh you know the wine guy and lived a very nice and comfortable life there but he didn't

he went out of his way to make sure that he did whatever he could do in his vocation to serve his people and to get him back on track yeah all right so 23 begins uh the last of these uh these issues he had to deal with in those days also so a lot happening here during these days i saw the jews had married women of ashdod amman and moab ashdod is uh one of the the older cities in the pentapolis of the philistines along the mediterranean coast so uh and married women from these places and half of their children spoke the language of ashdod whatever that was uh commentators are divided here as to what language that would have been. Maybe it's some relic of the old Philistine language. Some people think that Ashdod, which is kind of a general term for

an unintelligible language, like Greeks might talk about the barbarians who sounded just like bar, bar, bar, bar. Maybe Ashdodite was just kind of a slang term for an unintelligible language, but either way. Whatever it was, it wasn't the language of Judah. I know that. Yeah, it wasn't Hebrew. And they couldn't speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people so uh get these kids from these marriages that are mixed between israelite men and uh ashdodite ammonite moabite women kids they don't know hebrew they're speaking ashdodite they're barbarians so i confronted them the string of verbs here i confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair yeah this is this is uh i'm glad this is

descriptive and not prescriptive in this text yeah yeah nobody uh not going to be quoting nehemiah 1325 as uh as you know god giving you permission to treat people this way but this is nehemiah i mean this guy is uh if nothing else he is zealous for what he what he thinks is right here so he's confronting he's confronted a lot in this chapter but here he's cursing and he's beating and he's even going so far as to yank people's hair out and then he made them take an oath in the name of god saying you shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves and in verse 36 he pulls uh you know the famous example out from kings he says hey didn't solomon the king of israel sin on account of such women among the many nations

there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God. He was even given the name of Jedidiah, which means beloved of God. So among all the nations, nobody was like Solomon. God loved him. God made him king over all Israel, but foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women? I like this, because if you're going to boil this down, here's what he's saying. uh hey you're doing the thing that solomon did and you're no solomon it's a good way to put it yeah listen solomon uh great king very wise guy you're not solomon and if solomon was led astray by these non-israelite wives yeah you have no chance seriously think that you stand a chance

of not being led astray yeah so don't be let me pulling out the whole solomon card here because you're no Solomon. So yeah, it's a, it's, it's, it's great points, great argument. And what he didn't do, what he did not do is what we read in Ezra, you know, Ezra forced the divorces and the breakup of families and Nehemiah did not do that. So as, as zealous as he is, and it's kind of over the top violent as he is, at least didn't break up the families. So I'd rather have him cursed and beat and pull out some hair and then split up families. Yeah, it seems like he's like,

hey, this is stopping right now. And also everyone's about to learn Hebrew. Yeah, we're going to start Hebrew school. We're going to start marrying fellow Israelites. And we're going to get everybody where they need to be. Now, one more situation. Verse 28.

One of the sons of Jehoiada, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, was the son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite. Now, we've heard about Tobiah, and we've heard about Sanballat a lot. These were the two main problems that Nehemiah faced. They were the guys who ridiculed, jeered, plotted, all this stuff to try and stop Nehemiah. So you can imagine how happy Nehemiah was that this guy from the high priest family has married the daughter of the Sanballat's family.

So once more, Nehemiah jumps into action. and this time he chases him from me now i wish i could have seen that that would have been maybe he was going to pull this guy's hair out too i don't know but he took off so he chased him away and i i'm assuming this meant like he's gone it's like this took care of it yeah he's in exile or something like that but anyway he's no longer part of the part of the problem hey didn't you get then you get a different kind of remember yeah this is remember them yeah this is a very different kind of remembering remember them oh my god because they have desecrated the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the levites yeah it's a very

different kind of prayer so remember me uh in your steadfast love and remember them according to what they have done in desecrating the sacred priesthood so wrapping everything up here this is verse 30 and 31 thus i cleansed them from everything foreign and i established the duties of the priest in the levites each in his own work and i provided for the wood offering at appointed times and for the first fruits and i love this last the last line is actually of all the prayers that nehemiah records this is my favorite so it's one two three four five it's only seven words in english it's fewer in hebrew oh perfect perfect amount of words yeah remember me oh my god for good that's pretty good that's a pretty good that's pretty good prayer to personalize too

i mean you could you could memorize that and pray that uh in lots of different circumstances and it's a great way to wrap up the book of nehemiah and it's it's really a good way to think of Nehemiah's mission as a totality and what he was really all about and the way that he kind of pulls everything together in these few words. So don't forget me, but remember me, oh my God, for good. And there's your good word that you brought out a few episodes back. Yeah, well, it's nice if you ask that. Be the good God toward me that you are. Yeah, if you think of me, think of good things. This is what it is. And of course, you know,

there's plenty of bad things to think about anybody uh but god uh of course is a god who puts away sin and so he is able to uh it's interesting that god is going around finding righteous people but only because he's made righteous people and so god god does this thing where he surprises himself and he declares someone righteous and he's like look at how righteous Chad is. This is great. This is great. Well, that's the way that our good God operates according to his own loving kindness and mercy. Yeah. God is very pleased with the things that he supplies, isn't he? Yes, he is. And I love that he wrapped up the book the way that he did. There's a lot of Nehemiah doing things in this final chapter, but in the end he says,

It's, God, remember me for good. And that's something that each of us can pray as well. And that's 40 minutes. Yeah, that's it. 40 minutes, actually, and that is the end of Nehemiah. And so next week, Esther is on the horizon. Yeah, very different kind of book, man. It's going to be fun.

It will be. Looking forward to it. Yeah. All right. Well, guys, hopefully you will join us next week. We also have another surprise coming next week. podcast will be doing something different going forward and uh it's a nice teaser to to wrap it up with yeah nice little teaser yeah so you have to see you'll notice if you're if you're a

subscriber you'll notice what's going on and uh so uh we will see you then see you chad all right I'll see you next time.