Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [106]
• Nehemiah
BIBLICAL VOICES
Thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. (Neh. 9:17 KJV)
PLOT SUMMARY: NEHEMIAH
Approximately eighty years after the initial Return from Exile, things were still not going well in Jerusalem. Ezra may have been great at the law and a true genius if he is the man who crafted the Torah, but his divorce ruling hadn’t made him popular among the locals. When Ezra also proved ineffective as a civil administrator, the Persian king Artaxerxes dispatched a Jewish “cupbearer”—an official presumably charged with testing the king’s drinks for poison—named Nehemiah, living in Susa (Shush in modern Iran), to Jerusalem in 445 BCE. In the geopolitics of the period, Artaxerxes was interested in establishing a strong, loyal ally in Jerusalem to counter any potential threat from Egypt. The king commissioned Nehemiah to supervise repairs to the walls of Jerusalem, which had been breeched and damaged in the Babylonian invasion in 587 BCE and had crumbled from neglect during the intervening years. Nehemiah quickly began a repair program, endearing himself to the locals in the meantime by canceling all debts, since Jews were not supposed to charge fellow Jews interest. This move proved far more popular with the citizens of Jerusalem than Ezra’s decision to make them give up their non-Jewish wives had been.
Much of Nehemiah is concerned with the reconstruction of Jerusalem’s walls and watchtowers. When these public works were completed, Ezra was invited to rededicate the city by reading from the book of Moses. Nehemiah returned to Persia but, in his absence, laxity set in and he had to return to Jerusalem once more, possibly in 433, to lay down a new set of local laws. Gates were closed to merchants on the Sabbath and the issue of intermarriage was pushed to center stage once more.
In the historical sense, the Ezra-Nehemiah period also reflected a change in political realities for the Jewish people. Recognizing the power of Persia, Nehemiah made no attempt to reestablish the Davidic line of kings. Without a viable monarchy in the post-Exile period, authority over Jewish internal affairs rested with the Temple officials. The new Judah was a “theocracy” in which the priesthood held power over local religious and social life; all political and military power remained with the Persian kings.
Under Ezra and Nehemiah, the Second Temple became the focal point of Jewish religion, customs and power. The one God manifested himself in this place, the only place where sacrifices could be offered to God. The Temple’s central role was made even stronger by obligating Jews to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for three major religious festivals.
BIBLICAL VOICES
All the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding…. He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of men and the women who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. …So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that people understood the reading. (Neh. 8:1-8)
The last line of this verse refers to the fact that most Jews no longer understood Hebrew. By the time of the Return, Aramaic, a related Semitic language that originated in Aram (modern Syria) had replaced Hebrew as the common language of the ancient Near East, used for both trade and diplomacy, and the Law of Moses had to be translated for the Jews who gathered in Jerusalem to hear Ezra read. Later books of the Bible, including some late additions to Isaiah, parts of Ezra, and other books, were composed in Aramaic.
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THE POST-EXILE PROPHETS