40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Nehemiah 5:1-16 (Episode 364)

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

Nehemiah hears that the poor are being taken advantage of and is not pleased. The priests are called in as witnesses to the vow that such behavior will cease. And Nehemiah becomes governor but doesn't use the allowances of the position. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! Show Notes Support the Podcast Network Fundraiser 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube   More from the hosts Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Hello, this is Caleb Keith, the director of the 1517 Podcast Network, with an important announcement from the network to you. During the month of June, your favorite podcasts from 1517 are going to be participating in a podcast fundraiser. During this time, we are seeking to raise $50,000 for the 1517 Podcasts. The 1517 Podcast Network has created free gospel-centered content for over five years. we have new episodes of our 19 podcasts coming out every day of the week and we never fill them with ads or place them behind a paywall that's why this june we're asking listeners across our shows

to support 1517 and the teachers and creators behind your favorite theological resources your support directly impacts our ability to build and maintain podcast content that was listened to over six million times last year alone. Thank you to the listeners who enjoy and share our podcast. A special thanks to those who financially support our shows. We hope that you consider supporting this podcast and the rest of the network during our June fundraiser. And again, that goal is $50,000. One of the easiest ways you can help is by signing up for a monthly reoccurring donation. All you have to do is follow the support this show link at the top of the show notes, or go to 1517.org slash donate dash podcasts

to support your favorite shows. Again, we appreciate your support. Enjoy this episode of your favorite 1517 podcast. 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 while you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing.

One of the things we're doing right now, Chad, we're doing that Podcast Network fundraiser. This is going on, you know, just this month of June. and uh and what you get to do what you have an opportunity to do dear listener is support not just this show of course this show but all the shows that are on the podcast network that's 20 plus shows that uh that you're supporting when you support the uh the podcast network fundraiser and so uh what you have to do is uh you can go to the show notes and you can just click the link that says support this show or support the podcast network and click that link and it will take you to a way to support it.

And you can do that through a reoccurring donation. You can do that through a one-time donation, however you want to do it. We thank you very much to those who have done that, those of you who are going to do that, those who have done that for a long time. It is what makes us able to do this and makes it to where we don't have to try to come up with ways

to get the funds to do the stuff that we do. And those ways would be advertisements or paywalls. you know, you have to have a subscription or something to access, you know, past episodes or something like that. That's how that stuff all stays free for whoever wants to check it out. And so, thank you so much, and if you are able to, we would appreciate the support. All right, Chad, we are in Nehemiah chapter 5, and Nehemiah's got to do some in-house work, you know. Right now, he's been building the house he's had some opposition from outside the house uh but you know everyone's you know got a shield and everyone's got a sword or a spear or something

like that and you got people that are working uh with one eye on uh anyone that would come and try to stop their work and the work seems to have been going good the people are are they were intimidated for a little bit but that seemed to have has seemed to have waned and they're they're building this thing and you'd love it if it was just like and then they built the city the gates were all restored, the walls were rebuilt, and bam, you know, everything was great, because look at the unity. And the thing about this is that, and we talked about this last episode, it was kind of nice to see in the sort of history of Israel. It was kind of nice to see, like, everyone pitching in, and everyone's gathered around this common cause, and it's, you kind of did have this

sort of moment of singular purpose and unity, and it was kind of nice to see. I don't, it doesn't seemed that that uh harmonious thing was super long-lived yeah or you know as we have in other cases in the bible you you kind of get the impression when you're reading through one chapter it's like oh man these people i mean they are all all united around this common effort there's no problem so it's whatever and then you read the next chapter you're like oh well maybe that wasn't the complete picture you know you get the same thing when you read the book of acts you're like man those early christians they're selling property they're sharing everything just wonderful unity and then you read another couple chapters like oh well yeah maybe it was

a little bit too rosy of a picture at first maybe there were some more things going on but there's maybe there's unity over building project or unity over this or that but uh yeah there's always underlying you know skirmishes disagreements hurt feelings all that kind of stuff going on and that's what's happening here yeah you read through nemi 4 and they're all united in this common purpose they got a common enemy they got a common goal everything's going great and then you open up chapter five and you realize oh wait there's some there's some more things going on and like you said these are uh these are issues in the mi is going to have to deal with uh straight away and in a in a pretty pretty forceful sort of way too you know you know i

think chad we were chad we were talking before this uh because in uh in 30 minutes in the new Testament, the New Testament companion to the show. We're going through James, and I was talking about this sort of, one of the big things in the James letter, the thing that's really got, you know, it's really a pebble in James' shoe, is this sin of partiality. And he really is upset about the way that the Church is sort of engaging in what is super common in the world at that time, and obviously in this time as well, in this sort of classist structure, and they're letting that come into the Church as well. And so whatever your station is outside of the Church, well, they're treating you like that inside the Church, which of course is not what you're supposed

to do in the church. What's the old saying? That the ground is level at the foot of the cross, right? So in the church, you come in as all sinners and needing forgiveness. You come in as brothers. I mean, this is a big thing that's interesting about the church, that you call the people brother and sister, no matter what their station in life is. And classism was, of course, a huge thing. There was no—it wasn't even viewed as a bad thing. It's just the way things were. In this context, you sort of have, like, the same thing, and you realize that this is actually something that the people of God have struggled with forever, is this sort of partiality and this kind of stuff. And one of the reasons I bring it up is because one of the things that's common

language in the Old Testament, too, is this language of brothers, right? And so there is supposed to be some semblance of equality because you are of the same people, but that does not stop people from sort of showing this kind of partiality. And if you read the Old Testament prophets, or if you read the New Testament, and you read the letters of the Church, it does seem that this is one thing that God really doesn't like this. I was discussing this recently with people about the whole inner conversation Jesus has with the young man who's rich, and Jesus says, you know, sell all your possessions and then come follow me. And that's when you have the whole camel through the eye of a needle conversation and the the disciples were astonished and they

were astonished because they assumed that hey if this guy's rich he's blessed by god and so if he can't be saved then who can be saved it's so there's a lot of layers to the idea um layers to the problem here you have just kind of the economic disparity you have the the attention i guess disparities you might uh point out in james whether rich or show or shown favoritism and then in this case in Nehemiah you you not only have kind of this this different ways of treating people but the haves are actually taking advantage of the have-nots and they're reducing them to an even lower status by kind of taking advantage of the fact that there's famine going on there's the the men are not able to work back on the farm because they're taking care of the

wall building and as we see in verse one really what kind of brings us to it to it to a head it seems to me is that the wives get involved and they are not happy about the situation i mean they're explicitly pointed out as as some who bring this outcry about what's going on so uh let's kind of start out here verse verse one of chapter five says there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their jewish brothers so what's this outcry about well we have basically three different groups and each of these are introduced by there were those who said so first of all there were those who said with our sons and daughters we are many so let us get grain that we may eat and keep alive and then verse three there were also those who said well

we're mortgaging in our fields and our vineyards and our houses to get grain because of the famine and then verse four is the third group and there were those who said well we had to borrow money to pay the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards so those are the three groups basically you have what seems to be people who are what we would say today living paycheck to paycheck they don't have any land so they have no collateral they don't have anything that they can put out in order to get a loan so and they're in the big families they say with our sons and our daughters we are many there's a we got these big families and we have to have something to eat so we got to get some grain in order we can make bread and stay alive then you got the second group

those who said well we have fields and we got vineyards and we got houses but we're having to mortgage these we're having to basically put these up as collateral to people who do have some money so that we can get some grain because of because the famine that's going on and then the third group they had to borrow money to pay the tax the the persian tax on their fields and and on their vineyards so they're all kind of in the same situation uh there's people who live in paycheck to paycheck and have big families and everybody's hungry and there were others who had to put their fields up for collateral their land up for collateral and then there were those who you know they can't pay their taxes it's like the bar money because of that and where well where

are they getting the money when and what are they what are they being forced to do that's what we read about in verse five it says now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers our children are as their children yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves and some of our daughters have already been enslaved but it's not in our power to help it for other men have our fields and our our vineyards so that's kind of the that's the big situation as well as kind of the the the the individual situations within this bigger problem but the problem is basically that you've got these people these families where the men are busy building the wall they're not able to uh to be on the tractor not to take care of things back at back at home because they're in the city

and as we read in chapter four nehemiah is even enforcing them to stay at this they can't go back home so they're in the city they're they're defending and they're they're building they're busy with this and all the while their crops are suffering their families are suffering and their wives in particular are bringing this to the forefront because they're basically left alone they got all these kids and they're trying to take care of things at home and now you know in order to pay debts they're going to be forced to sell their their kids into at least a temporary slavery in order to pay debts or they might lose everything if they do have land they've had to put it up as collateral well if they can't pay it back then they're going to lose it and then they're

going to be destitute too and the real culprit here as we'll see in the rest of the chapter are the richer jews who are taking the lands as collateral who may be then taking also these children as as their slaves and are basically not acting like brothers but they're they're treating their fellow israelites like they would gentiles instead of treating them like brothers brothers and sisters yeah i mean if you take if you take this to sort of a church context this would be like if someone needed something from you and you uh said well like uh and i'll tell you what like let me let me help you out uh here's the most insane interest rate uh in the history of the world uh or uh yeah just let me uh take your kid out of your house and he can work for me for

the next 15 years, and we'll call it even. And you're doing this to people who are supposed to be your family. Yeah, they're supposed to be your family. They're supposed to be the ones that you especially look out for, that you take care of. Poverty was a huge focus of the Torah. You're never supposed to abuse a poor person. Instead, you are to treat them with special respect and special care that's a situation that uh that has arisen during the course of the the 52 days that's required to build the law we haven't got to the 52 days part that's going to come up in the next chapter it takes 52 days to complete the wall so a lot happens in a short amount of time and maybe this was building you know before they actually started working on the wall probably was

probably was a long time and and coming to a head and nehemiah in the section we're about to look at He finds out what's going on, or maybe at least has brought to his full attention what's going on, and he realizes that he's going to have to deal with it. He's going to have to deal with it straight away before matters get any worse than they already are. You know what's interesting about the Bible and the way it treats sort of poverty and the idea that there will be those who have and those who don't, is you have Jesus who has really helpful in this statement where he says, hey, the poor you will always have with you.

And so the Bible's real honest about the idea that there will always be people who have less, right? This is the way it is. So the poor you'll always have with you. And at the same time, the scripture is very clear that God really, really doesn't like it when you mistreat the poor you will always have with you. So there will always be this group of people

and god will always be very irritated if you mistreat them yeah yeah he threatens that uh you know if you if you upset a poor person if you deprive them of the very little that they do have when their prayers come to me i will hear those yeah and and i will act uh so it's and these are not just empty words empty threats uh god means these words so yeah so there's there's never any kind of a you know socialist program where everybody's supposed to be you know on equal footing there's a very much of a realism the scriptures yeah you're always going to have poor people you're always going to have rich people you're always going to have people in between what matters is how you treat the people who don't have as much as you have and how you

are to treat them is precisely what we're talking about here yeah not as a stranger uh not as someone that you can take advantage of but instead how you would treat your own sibling how you would treat your your own brother and that explains why in verse six nehemiah in his own words this is often referred to by the way i don't think i mentioned this before if you check the commentaries i'll talk about the uh the nehemiah memoir you know where he kind of collected a bunch of information and some of these just kind of list some of these are more like almost read like genealogies but list of people who came and this and that is inserted here but interspersed with that is the nehemiah memoir where he's speaking in first person as we'll see later in this chapter

even include what he did in love and faithfulness to uh uh to the people of israel so here he records verse six his reaction i was very angry when i heard their outcry outcry and and these words which is what you would expect from nehemiah i mean everything we've we've kind of got to know about him he he comes across as a person who uh has some pretty um uh intense emotions about things you know he's he's going to react and he's going to he's going to act in a way that tries to fix the situation that he's that he's upset about so he's angry when he hears about this outcry and it's kind of like between verse six and seven it's almost like he has a cool and off period so he finds out and he's really mad, but he doesn't immediately act. He says, verse seven, I took

counsel with myself. So he sits down and he thinks through this. All right, this is wrong. I'm upset about this, but how am I going to deal with it? Of course, there's lots of ways he could have dealt with it. He seems to approach it in a way that is level-headed and not overly or at least overtly angry, but he tries to appeal to the perpetrators here in a way that is consistent with the Torah, as well as consistent just kind of with human compassion and this brotherly sense that Israel has. I like this phrase, I took counsel with myself, because on one hand that sounds like, so then I got with myself, and we decided, me, myself, and I. I had a meeting with I had a meeting with me, myself, and I, and we talked through things.

Yeah, but I think what this is really, so to say, I took counsel with myself. I think this is like, I was super angry, so I went and sat down, calmed down, and thought through it, and came up with a plan. Now, it is interesting that he doesn't go to anyone else and ask them what they should do. How are we going to deal with this or anything like that? but it does seem like so yeah i had to have this moment where i talked to myself you know because maybe who knows what his first impulse was gonna be maybe it was gonna be uh he's pretty mad so it could have been too much could have been too rash later in the book he does drag people around by the hair so yeah maybe he should have taken counsel with himself in that situation yeah so

i just imagine him like sitting down or who knows maybe he went for a walk he's like all right calm down calm down what's going to be the best way to handle this yeah and haven't we all done that you know you get really irritated over something and you know maybe your first impulse is to make a phone call and shoot somebody out or you know send a fiery email to somebody but you like like you said you take a walk well we first of all hear very much of a kind of official legal tone to it i've got uh i got some charges i got some accusations that i'm going to bring against the nobles and the officials now that tells you that these aren't just rich people in other words these are people in positions of leadership over the people of god so nobles and officials those

are the ones that charge is going to be brought against so they're taking they're taking advantage not only the fact that they have more affluence than the others do but also the fact that they have these leadership roles where they can use their own power to uh to their own benefit she says i said to them and here the opinions vary on this uh esv has you are exacting interest opinions vary because that's not the typical word for interest that's used elsewhere in the scriptures it can mean that here it can mean kind of a maybe an excessive burden that he that is being laid upon them but whatever it is whether they're exacting interest or whether it's a case of an excessive burden they're laying on the peoples what they're doing is they're doing this

against their brothers. So you're exacting interest or you're laying these oppressive burdens upon those that you are to treat as your brothers. And that's just kind of a summary statement. We're going to hear more about it as he goes on. So he gets everybody together. He's not going to deal with this one-on-one. He's going to bring everybody together. I held a great assembly against them. And here's what he said. This is verse eight. We, as far as we're able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us. So it's kind of, he's like, think through what you're doing here. You know, all of our Jewish brothers and sisters who have been sold into slavery to

the Gentiles, what are we doing? Well, we're doing everything that we can, everything within our ability to buy them back from their gentile overlords now what are you doing well you're turning around and you're selling your brothers that they may be sold to us now what sense does this make you know we're we're trying to get everybody out of slavery and what you're doing is putting them into slavery instead and their response i love their response they were silent and couldn't find a word to say. Now, if you're bringing charges against someone and that's their reaction,

well, then I would say you're doing a pretty good job of it. Because typically, you know, people, well, they're extenuating circumstances or they say, well, you know, if you read the law in this sort of way, then we are able to do this and not break the Torah of Moses,

but nothing. They know they're guilty and their guilt, when it's pointed out, actually silences them. Which, you know, that's great. Nehemiah made a good argument. and credit to them, at least they recognize the problem that they have created. Yeah, I mean, this is like him saying, hey, our whole project here is to sort of,

as a captive people, and a people who have been, you know, in exile, in bondage, and are still, like, have, like, sort of a, you know, a king over them. But our whole, the whole project here is to certainly maximize as much freedom as we can for our people and you're over here buying and selling this is contrary to everything we're trying to do here

we're breaking the chains of our people and then you're turning around and putting them right back on so you're undermining all of our efforts in emancipation here so they're silent and could not find a word to say so Nehemiah's not quite done

verse 9 says he goes on to say something else the thing that you are doing is not good ought you not to walk in the fear of our god to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies it's kind of interesting argument and that we actually hear that argument a lot uh all the way from the from the days of moses onward you know when moses reminds god when god wants to destroy the people of israel like after the golden calf and Moses begins to intercede, one of the arguments that Moses makes, and you hear this elsewhere in the scriptures,

is that, hey, if you do this, then that's not going to make you look very good in the eyes of the nations. This is not the image that you want to present before the world. And it's kind of like that with Nehemiah here. He's like, hey, if you do this, if you don't walk in the fear of God, And then our enemies, the nations, are going to use this to taunt us, to throw shade on us.

They'll be like, look at those Jews. They don't even care about their own people. So what kind of God do they have when they're behaving in this sort of way and enslaving their own people, selling their own people into slavery? So instead, Nehemiah says, walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations. And as we pointed out many times in the podcast, you know, to fear God or to walk in the fear of God doesn't simply mean that you are in trepidation before him, you know, trembling before God. Fear is often used as a synonym for faith in the Old Testament. So as well as hope and love, it's kind of an all-encompassing term. So walk in the fear of God means to believe in, act in faith toward God.

and then as a fruit of that of course is love so love your by walking in the fear of god by walking the faith of god then you're acting in love toward your neighbor verse 10 he goes on rather than taking from them we're lending them money and grain so let us abandon this exacting of interest verse 11 return to them this very day their fields their vineyards their olive orchard and their houses and the percentage literally the the the 100th which probably either that hebrew term either refers to percentage in general or maybe some some scholars argue that it's like a a one percent per month it's kind of the idea and then over the course of the year it'd be 12 but either way uh he says return to them that percentage or that one percent of money grain wine and oil that

you've been exacting from them so that's his proposal he says first of all you guys need to all the stuff that you have taken give it back cancel all the debts cancel all the interest and in the future abandon this form of kind of you know taking fields and vineyards of what whatever as as collateral and instead treat them like you would your brothers and sisters treat them as those who are in need and those that you act in in compassion compassion toward and i guess it's important i guess at this point also to point out uh something we covered a lot years ago when we're when we're talking about leviticus and that is that according to the torah the israelites could loan money

to the Gentiles and exact interest from them. That was allowed. So the Israelites could loan money to whoever it was, a non-Israelite, and receive interest on that. However, both, I think three different times, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy say that if they are loaning money to a fellow Israelite, then they cannot charge interest on that.

And that's, of course, referred to typically as usury. So interest to non-Israelites, yes interest to israelites no and um that was very different from anything in the ancient world there's all sorts of law codes that we have law code of hamarabi is one example where there are very strict laws given about the exacting of interest how much you can charge and you know maybe there's a disaster a famine or something then there is then the the lender is not able to to uh impoverish the person that that borrowed money from them so there's a lot of different laws about lending and borrowing but every single one of these ancient cultures did allow for the

charging of interest and israel alone at least as far as we know israel alone did not allow for the charging of interest against a fellow citizen so you could borrow money and you know you could you could sell yourself into slavery if you needed to to pay debts, but what a lender could not do was to charge interest. And of course, there were plenty of instances where this law was not kept, both in the Bible as well as throughout history, but that was the law. No charging of interest to your fellow Israelites. You could charge interest, though, to the Gentiles. I think part of, too, they just, you know, if you're going to fear the Lord, that would be, you know, if you're going to trust the Lord, there is no need for you to do these things. So I think in Nehemiah's mind,

like charging interest that you're not supposed to charge or selling someone, you know, making someone your slave, these things are contrary to trusting God. This is trying to take care of yourself when you should be in a position where you say, I'm going to help my brother or my sister because I trust that God is going to take care of my needs. I don't need to sort of hoard up, especially at the expense of my neighbor. This is an act of distrust in God. Yeah, trust is at the core of the issue here. I mean, you trusted God to bring you out of captivity, which he did.

You trusted God to help you build the wall, which he did. so trust him also in the future to to care for you and and you know to use you to care for those who are in need who are or around you and so you know rather than rather than trust they're simply taking advantage of the situation in order to line their own pockets and in so doing abusing their their brethren yep so verse 12 uh nehemiah is done uh more or less so what are the the people were silent before so what are they going to say now we will restore these and require nothing from them we will do as you say that's that's a response to basically say okay that's as good as that can go you're making that argument could it could it have gone any better i mean that's that's that's

pretty perfect uh they don't are they don't produce any kind of arguments they don't say well what about this so what about that they basically say you're right we're wrong and not of that but we're going to we're not only going to stop what we're doing but we're going to give back all the money we've been taking and we're not going to engage in this activity any anymore now Nehemiah wants to make sure that they're serious about this so he calls for the priest and I guess they're the witnesses here that's the way that I read this anyway called the priest and made them swear to do them I think he's referring back to the lenders made them that is the lenders swear to do as they had promised so you know you call in the the

priest kind of add a little bit of authority here as witnesses to the oath we have kind of one of these prophetic uh signs i guess is what you would call it uh nehemiah takes his garment this long garment that would have had pockets i suppose here and there and he he shook it out i shook out the full of my garment and said so may god shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep his promises so may he be shaken out and emptied and all the assembly said amen to that and praise the lord and the people did as as they had promised he brings in the priests maybe this isn't right but it seems like so he brings in you know sort of the you know the religious guys. I mean, not that Nehemiah is not a religious guy, but, you know, he brings in

the church, as it were, and says, okay, these guys are going to make an oath to do this stuff. I want you guys to hear it. And this does a couple of things, I think. One, it amplifies that you're making this promise before God that God is witnessing, because now you've got the priests there right so they're they're sort of they're going to be the eyes of god uh in this situation they're going to see you and in the ears of god and hear you make this promise so you've got you've got the religious leaders there also uh you sort of have this um i don't know that is there is there a little threat of uh all right you said you're going to do this uh yeah i don't want to like these guys all see, like, I'm not going to want to see you

at any rebuilt temple if you don't do this. I mean, there's a sort of, like, excommunication threat as you, like, make this promise in front of the priests, and if they find out you haven't, I expect them to, you know, do what has to be done, and this could mean maybe you're not welcome there until

this is done. I think that would, yeah. It seems like it's fair. It seems to be implied. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, it's like, hey, see, it's a congregational setting, all right? You've got a very wealthy member who's taking advantage of a very poor member, and this

becomes known, and so you get together the pastor and the elders, right? And you talk through the situation, and everybody now knows the situation. Everybody hears, you know, the rich guy says, okay, I'm not going to do this anymore. I repent. Forgive me, and I'm going to make this

right. And the pastor and the elders are there, and they hear the promise. So if the guy shows up at church the next Sunday, and he hasn't done what he promised, well, there's going to be there's gonna be problems yeah yeah that's what i do this you know the the the whole shaking of the robe to uh to visualize uh exactly what god will do to you if you don't follow through what you promised to do yeah yeah yeah that's how that's how it reads like there's like a it's not

it's not just like stated but it's there where you're like man you're promising this in front of god and the church and uh it just sort of amps up what it is that you're agreeing to do and you And you really probably ought to follow through on it. I think after all that, I probably would. Not only for the sake of making the promise, but of the threat that goes along with it. So that's the first 13 verses of chapter 5. We've got a few more verses to cover, which I think we can do before the end of our 40 minutes here. Because there's not a whole lot here.

This is Nehemiah basically telling his readers, hey, this is what I did. I dealt with this situation. you know you you had these people who were taking advantage of the poor well let me tell you how i as as the governor took care of the people and and really even for i i i would forego what was due to me in order to make sure that i could actually care for the people who were uh who were hungry and who were in need so he says verse 14 moreover from that time i was appointed to be their governor. This is the first time we've heard about this. So Nehemiah not only came from the king on this errand, but sometime along the way, he was also appointed to be governor of this

little section of the Persian, the vast Persian empire. So he was appointed governor in the land of Judah from the 20th year to the 32nd year of Artaxerxes the king. So for a dozen years, he says, I was the governor. This is probably then, by the way, this is probably out of temporal sequence. This is him reflecting much later on. So for 12 years, this is what I did. And here's what I did. Here's what I didn't do. Neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor. So we were allowed a certain amount of money to make sure that there was all this food on our table. Well, we didn't take that. Now, the former governors, the guys who were in office before me, oh, they did. They took advantage of this. They laid heavy burdens on the people and

took from them their daily ration, 40 shekels of silver. So Nehemiah is saying, this was not a good situation before I arrived. You had these former governors, the people who were in office before me, they took full advantage of this. I mean, they were taxing the people. They were making sure they had all this food on their table that was provided by taking from their fellow Israelites. I didn't do that. In fact, even their servants, he said, lorded it over the people. i didn't do that why because of the fear of god because i fear god i trust in him and because of that i'm acting in love and compassion toward those who were around me so nehemiah is basically saying he tried to set a new precedent here it was a bad precedent before when he took office

this is what he did verse 16 he says i also persevered in the work on the wall we acquired no land and all my servants were gathered there for the work there were 150 guys at my table jews and officials but besides those who became his envoys from the nations who were around us so he's providing food for a whole lot of people and then verse 18 he kind of spells this out he says here's what was prepared at my expense every day an ox was butchered you had sheep and you had bird you had every 10 days we had wine brought in in abundance yet for all this for all what which i provided i did not demand the food allowance of the governor because the service was too heavy on the people already they were already they were already encumbered by taxation

and by all these various expenses from the persians and i didn't want to take further advantage of them and this probably indicates that nehemiah was already independently wealthy that's my guess i mean there's no way that you can do all of this unless you have unless you have some some some pretty deep pockets of your own i mean if he's providing food for all these people on an ongoing basis and basically saying no i don't want that part of my salary i'll i'm gonna forego that i'm gonna pay for all this out of my own pocket well that sounds great in theory but when it comes right down to it the only way you can do that is if you yourself are already independently wealthy so nehemiah i presume was a was a what was a well-off guy you know either

either that cup bearing is a lucrative gig uh which maybe it is uh or when he left he was such a good cup bearer that the king wanted to make sure that you know he was going to be okay wherever he went i assume it's one of those two things probably uh the latter he had a healthy endowment yeah he was he was well taken care of uh and so having done all this uh he says verse 19 he finishes up with this very short prayer remember for my good oh my god all that i have done for for this people so uh remember me remember all the the the ways in which i stopped everything described in the first part of that chapter and the good that i did and taking care of taking care of this people. And Nehemiah did.

I mean, I don't know quite what to think of the gist of the prayer, but I suppose this is Nehemiah saying as part of he's writing it, he's not just praying this, he's writing it down. So it's his way of I suppose leaving behind a

legacy for his readers to remember what he did for the Israelites while he was in office. Well, I think that you might be like, oh, is that really what you do? Do you do good things and ask God to can't remember those good things. The positive way to look at this is that Nehemiah, and we're going to see in the very next chapter, that Nehemiah has enemies. The people of God have

enemies. And Nehemiah is very aware of what happens when there's all kinds of unrighteousness and this kind of stuff, and you have enemies. Sometimes God just lets those enemies win. And I think what Nehemiah is doing here is to say, hey, I'm doing the best I possibly can to have this be a just and honoring society. I hope you remember that. That's what's happening. As we've talked about before, I mean, you're asking God to remember, you're asking Him to act. And so should we need you to act, I hope you will remember that there were things that were out order. We put those things in order, and we're not like the other nations. They're not perfect, obviously, but they're trying to be the type of people that are not like their forefathers who

would refuse to hear the Word of the Lord. And so I think it's probably something like that, if I'm looking at it in the best way, that he's saying, hey, I know bad stuff's coming eventually, and i hope you will treat us differently than when bad stuff came to the people who came before us which they had uh bad stuff came for them and you you let it come for them yeah i think that's a good charitable way of of reading it i think it's in it's in accord with kind of the tone of the rest of nehemiah too i mean you put yourself back in the situation i mean they're uh they're fresh off basically fresh off not quite but you know it wasn't long since the babylonian exile took place they're they're trying to get things rolling again they're trying to get back on their feet

build the wall they got the temple built and they're not wanting to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors yeah so let's worship god let's fear god and let's treat everybody according to the way the torah lays it out where we care for each other we don't take advantage of each other and my saying hey i i did my best to to accomplish that so remember that god and remember your people and take care of us while we're here trying to rebuild. That's right. All right, man, that is it. We are out of time, and we will have to continue next week with chapter 6, where there's going to be a little conspiracy going on. Maybe this is exactly the sort of thing that Nehemiah is asking God to remember, if such a thing should

happen. Well, that conspiracy, we're going to find out more about next episode. I will see you then, Chad. All right, we'll see you then. We'll see you next time.