Nehemiah About this book
About this book
Twelve years after the last events of the book of Ezra, a Jew named Nehemiah received bad news about Jerusalem: the walls of the city were still broken down, and the burnt gates had never been replaced.
Nehemiah lived in the Persian city of Susa and was a personal servant to King Artaxerxes. So Nehemiah prayed and asked God to make Artaxerxes send him to Jerusalem to rebuild the city. Artaxerxes did send Nehemiah, and he even provided the materials for the repairs.
After Nehemiah had arrived in Jerusalem and the repair work had begun, the officials from neighbouring areas insulted the Jews and accused them of wanting to rebel against Persia. These enemies even planned attacks against Jerusalem and tried to have Nehemiah killed. Finally, the walls and gates were finished and dedicated to God, and they became a sign that God had blessed his people.
But Nehemiah realized that God would continue to bless his people only if they obeyed him. As Nehemiah said in one of his prayers:
LORD God of heaven, you are great and fearsome. And you faithfully keep your promises to everyone who loves you and obeys your commands.
(1.5)
A quick look at this book
1. King Artaxerxes sends Nehemiah to Jerusalem (1.1—2.10)
2. Rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem (2.11—4.22)
3. Nehemiah's concern for the poor (5.1-19)
4. The wall is finished, in spite of enemy plots (6.1—7.3)
5. Exiles who returned (7.4-73)
6. Ezra reads God's Law to the people, and they celebrate the Festival of Shelters (8.1-18)
7. The people confess their sins (9.1-37)
8. The people sign an agreement to obey the Lord (9.38—10.39)
9. The people who settled in Jerusalem and Judah (11.1-36)
10. Priests and Levites who returned from exile (12.1-26)
11. Nehemiah dedicates the city wall (12.27-47)
12. Changes Nehemiah made (13.1-31)
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Nehemiah About this book: CEVUK
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© British and Foreign Bible Society 2012
Nehemiah Introduction
Introduction
In the Hebrew Bible the books of Ezra and Nehemiah formed a single scroll or book and were positioned toward the end of the Hebrew Bible (just before Chronicles) as one of the later Hebrew Bible books to be written. They were kept together in the Greek Septuagint Bible but were positioned after 2 Chronicles to pick up on the theme of the return from exile introduced at the end of that book and then carry Israel's historical narrative forward. The Latin Vulgate Bible presents Ezra and Nehemiah as two books but follows the Septuagint tradition of positioning them among the Historical books. The KJV continues the Vulgate tradition. Importantly, Ezra and Nehemiah contain the only narrative record of the post-exile rebuilding era included in the Hebrew Bible.
Nehemiah had achieved the position in the Persian royal court of cupbearer to the king (1.11b), but his ancestry was Judean and when he saw reports of poor results in the early rebuilding efforts in Jerusalem he sought and received approval from the Persian king, Artaxerxes, to return to Jerusalem and administer the rebuilding himself. He tells what happened in a first-person “memoir” style and, unlike Ezra, Nehemiah relates the administrative aspects of the restoration work. He faced considerable opposition from without and from within the rebuilding community and even survived plots against his life (6.1-14). But his disciplined approach enabled the city walls to be (almost fully) rebuilt in fifty-two days (6.15-19). In the reconstruction both the temple and city walls were successfully rebuilt, but the replacements were much less grand or extensive than their originals from Solomon's day. The Persian rulers took an interest in these restoration projects in remote Judah because this was a time when Egypt was restless and trying to revolt against Persian control, and it was in the Persian king's interest to have a stable and sympathetic kingdom of Judah as a buffer.
Chapters 8–10 record a significant ceremony led by Ezra, marking the completion of the rebuilding work and the renewal of the community's spiritual life in Judah. Ezra read to the assembled people the whole Torah. That was followed by observance of the “feast of the seventh month” (Feast of Booths) as called for in the Torah. Following a corporate confession of sin (chapter 9) the people pledge to keep the Torah precepts in their daily lives, and the book concludes with a report of Nehemiah's further actions as the chief administrator of the Jerusalem restoration.
Outline
Nehemiah Returns to Administer the Rebuilding of the Walls (1.1—7.73)
The Torah Is Read to the Community and the Covenant Renewed (8.1—10.39)
Nehemiah's Further Work (11.1—13.31)
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King James Version 1611, spelling, punctuation and text formatting modernized by ABS in 1962; typesetting © 2010 American Bible Society.