Welcome to Bible Fiber. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern. This week we are studying Nehemiah 13. It has taken six months to work our way through Ezra-Nehemiah, one chapter at a time, but we have finally arrived at the book’s conclusion. The book closes with the record of Nehemiah’s second administrative stint, so an extended time elapsed between Chapter 12 and Chapter 13.
After 12 years of governing in Judah, Nehemiah journeyed to Susa to check-in with King Artaxerxes. Recall that the king had readily given Nehemiah permission to go to Jerusalem, but the king’s only stipulation was that Nehemiah would eventually return (2:6). Nehemiah kept his word by reappearing in the Persian court to give a report of all the happenings in the Judean province. With the city walls rebuilt, Jerusalem repopulated, and the people recommitted to covenant obedience, Nehemiah likely felt it was a safe moment to take a sabbatical from his governorship.
Nehemiah’s memoir indicates that he spent “some time” in Susa, which is vague but probably less than two years (13:6). During that time, the fickle people of Judah reverted to their previous sin patterns. In the absence of their governor, they lost all their initial resolve to obey God’s commandments. The crisis of faith that Nehemiah found upon his return to Judah is reminiscent of the golden calf episode in Exodus. Moses was away from the newly freed slaves for only 40 days as he communed with God on Mount Sinai. In that short amount of time, they gave up on both Moses and Yahweh and fashioned an idol to worship (Ex. 32). While Nehemiah was away, the people did not revert to idolatry, but they rebelled in other ways.
Chapter 13 opens with another public reading of the laws of Moses, a common occurrence in Nehemiah (13:1). The people came across the section of Deuteronomy that indefinitely banned the Israelites from marrying Ammonites and Moabites (Deut. 23:3-5). Once again, the remnant had to cope with their problem of intermarriage with foreigners. The prohibition of intermarriage with the peoples of the land was a persistent problem for Ezra and Nehemiah despite their efforts to establish firm boundaries to protect the community. In response to hearing the law, the elders of Judah “separated from Israel all those of foreign descent” (13:3).
As a spiritual and civil leader, Nehemiah was careful to bring Torah mandates into the picture anytime he had to institute reforms. Holding regular public readings demonstrated Nehemiah was not an ad hoc ruler; he held the Israelites to their ancient standards preserved in the laws of Moses. The terms of the covenant preexisted Nehemiah, but it was his job to keep the restored community within those guidelines. In this instance, the people learned that God had decreed early in their history that they were never to marry Ammonites or Moabites.
The Israelites had a long fraught history with the Ammonites and Moabites. Their origin was that they descended from the incestuous relationship between Lot and his two daughters after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:36-38). Because both nations were Judah’s extended kin through Lot, God gave them a protected status during Joshua’s conquest.
God instructed Joshua’s army to leave Moab alone, for he had divinely allotted them their land (Deut. 2:9). The Moabites did not feel the same allegiance of kinship to Israel or to Yahweh. When the Israelites tried to pass through Moab on their way to Canaan, the king of Moab hired a seer to curse the Israelites (Num. 22-23). After that insult, God banned the Moabites from assimilating with Israel (13:2)
As for the Ammonites, kinship was not enough to maintain their peace with Israel either. Bloody conflict was a regular characteristic of their relationship. When King David sent envoys to convey his condolences for the death of an Ammonite king, the action was mistaken as a threat and the Ammonites shaved off half the beards of each of David’s envoys and cut their garments to their waists (2 Sam. 10). The Ammonites’ attempt to humiliate King David made a permanent negative impression in Israel’s national memory.
While Ezra prohibited intermarriage with all outsiders when he returned to Jerusalem (Ez. 9-10), Nehemiah emphasized the ban on Ammonites and Moabites. Nehemiah’s narrower focus partially derived from the growing postexilic problem of Israelite men marrying women from Ammon and Moab (13:23). However, Nehemiah also took a hardline because during his absence, his archenemy Tobiah the Ammonite got a foothold within the community. Being Ammonite was not the only reason for Tobiah’s expulsion, but it was sufficient. Tobiah had plotted against Nehemiah throughout the entire reconstruction process (2:10, 19; 4:3, 7). Alongside Sanballat, he did everything in his power to obstruct the rebuilding of the wall and Israel’s restoration.
By marrying into a Jewish noble family, Tobiah gained access to the priesthood in Jerusalem. Using his family connections, he took up residence in one of the temple storerooms during Nehemiah’s time away. Imagine Nehemiah’s surprise when he returned from Susa and found his greatest enemy had transformed the temple storeroom into a personal apartment.
Nehemiah’s memoir puts the blame for the sacrilege on Eliashib the high priest. Nehemiah says, Eliashib “was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God,” meaning he was responsible for the protection of the temple, but he failed (13:4).
Eliashib either let his blood relation to Tobiah cloud his better judgement, or he took a bribe from Tobiah. Nehemiah did not specify. Either way, Eliashib actively cleared out the storeroom of its proper sacred contents—offerings, vessels, tithes, and incense—to make room for Tobiah to use it as a residence (13:5). Other priests were surely complicit in the crime.
The storeroom was not a minor building on the temple complex. Like the sanctuary, the temple storeroom was considered sacred and devoted to Yahweh. The storeroom held consecrated vessels and incense for temple rituals. The storeroom’s offerings and tithes aided the priests and Levites’ needs. In earlier chapters, Nehemiah oversaw a collection of tithes for the temple storeroom and made certain the priests stored them away properly (10:39-40). After their joyful procession around the city walls, they ritually dedicated the storerooms for temple use (12:44-47). That the priests had moved out sacred and necessary objects for temple worship to make room for Nehemiah’s enemy Tobiah was outrageous.
Nehemiah recounted his reaction to the discovery of the betrayal in first-person. He said, “I was very angry, and I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the room” (13:8). Tobiah had been there long enough to have his own furnishings! Nehemiah ordered the decontamination of the storeroom before restocking it with vessels, grain offerings, and frankincense (13:9).
Apparently, when Tobiah was living on the temple complex, the priests and Levites could not conduct temple worship and sacrifice without purified vessels and instruments. In particular, the priests did not give the Levites and the singers their portion of the food offerings (13:10). When the system failed, the Levites and temple workers had to choose between going hungry or leaving the temple to return to their fields (13:10).
The prophet Malachi witnessed the same situation. Malachi likely ministered in Judah between Nehemiah’s first and second stint in Jerusalem. The prophet and the governor’s complaints about the remnant’s offenses correspond so closely that they had to overlap in time. Malachi accused the people of skimping on their tithes and bringing blemished sacrifices, trying to get away with as little offering as possible (Mal. 1:6-14; 3:8-10). Both Nehemiah and Malachi worried about the Levites because the tithes were the Levites only means of sustenance (Deut. 12:5-19; 14:22-29).
Throughout Nehemiah’s address, it seems his beef was not with the Levites but with the priests. The same was true for Malachi who warned the priests that if they did not start listening to God and glorifying his name, he would curse them and their offspring (Mal. 2:3). Nehemiah asks the priests, “Why is the house of God forsaken?” (13:11).
The allowance of Tobiah in the temple storeroom showed Nehemiah was more concerned with the temple’s protection than the priests. Lacking any trust in the high priesthood or its collaborators, Nehemiah stepped over his normal boundaries of civil control and meddled in the temple’s affairs. Nehemiah appointed four trustworthy men to oversee a collection of tithes and offerings and to serve as treasurers to distribute the inventory (13:13). The people responded to his appeal and brought their tithes to the temple.
Sabbath
Alongside temple purification and halting intermarriage, the Sabbath was Nehemiah’s third area of focused reform. The people had gone lax in their observance of Sabbath laws. Before he left, they had complied with the prohibition against foreign traders coming into Jerusalem on the Sabbath (10:31). When Nehemiah returns, he witnessed Judeans in the countryside “treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys,” acts forbidden on the day of rest (13:15). They were also allowing Tyrian merchants to come inside Jerusalem’s gates and set up markets on the Sabbath (13:16). Jerusalemites bought fish and other merchandise from the Tyrians with no qualm. They had turned God’s Holy Sabbath into a market day!
Once again, Nehemiah took charge in correcting the offense, because the Judean nobles were apparently impotent. The Tyrians enjoyed their monopoly in the city on the Sabbath, and they were not keen to relinquish it. Nehemiah transferred Levite guards from the temple gates to the city gates and sealed Jerusalem shut on Sabbath (13:19). Nehemiah believed that it was the responsibility of the Levites, who were used to guarding the sacred space of the temple, to also protect God’s sacred time, the Sabbath. Rabbi Abraham Heschel on his book The Sabbath explains, “The sabbath is to time what the temple and tabernacle are to space. The sabbath is a cathedral in time. On the seventh day we experience in time what the tabernacle and temple represented as spaces which is eternal life, God in the complete creation.”
Tyrian merchants camped outside the gates, waiting for an opportunity to enter. Nehemiah threatens the Tyrians with physical punishment, saying, “Why do you spend the night in front of the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you” (13:21). Tyrians had no religious obligation regarding Sabbath, unlike the Israelites. Out of all the Jewish customs, the Sabbath was the most uniquely Jewish practice that set them apart from every other ancient Near Eastern culture. Like Judah, the peoples of the land had harvest festivals and New Moon celebrations. None of them designated a weekly day of rest for everyone.
Observance of the Sabbath was God’s earliest commandment, first established at creation and reinforced on Mount Sinai (Gen. 2:3; Ex. 20:8-11). Nehemiah’s zealous defense of the Sabbath put him in the same camp as other biblical heroes. Moses persuaded the people in the wilderness to restrain from gathering manna on the Sabbath (Ex. 16:22). Before the exile, the prophets cautioned Judah against breaking the Sabbath. Jeremiah warned his audience that if they broke the Sabbath, God would kindle an “unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem that will consume her fortresses” (Jer. 17:27). Nehemiah’s message reiterated the warnings of Jeremiah that if they violated the Sabbath, God’s wrath would burn against them (13:18). Sabbath breaking triggered God’s punishment once and it could happen again.
Jeremiah promised that if the people kept the Sabbath holy, God would restore the throne of David and the Kingdom of Judah forever (Jer. 17:24-25). Surely the nation without a king or independence longed to see Jeremiah’s prophecy of full restoration come true.
Breaking from my usual pattern, I’m dividing Nehemiah’s last chapter into two parts. Next week we are going to discuss the rest of Nehemiah 13 as we grapple with how to process the book’s tough ending and what that means for Nehemiah’s reputation and the future of the remnant.
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Shabbat Shalom