Scripture Daily

Context No. 263 of 4322 · Nehemiah

Context · Reflection

Nehemiah 8:12-18: in context

12All the people went their way to eat, to drink, to send portions, and to celebrate, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. 13On the second day, the heads of fathers’ households of all the people, the priests, and the Levites were gathered together to Ezra the scribe, to study the words of the law. 14They found written in the law how the LORD had commanded by Moses that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month; 15and that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities and in Jerusalem, saying, “Go out to the mountain, and get olive branches, branches of wild olive, myrtle branches, palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make temporary shelters, as it is written.” 16So the people went out and brought them, and made themselves temporary shelters, everyone on the roof of his house, in their courts, in the courts of God’s house, in the wide place of the water gate, and in the wide place of Ephraim’s gate. 17All the assembly of those who had come back out of the captivity made temporary shelters and lived in the temporary shelters, for since the days of Joshua the son of Nun to that day the children of Israel had not done so. There was very great gladness. 18Also day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read in the book of the law of God. They kept the feast seven days; and on the eighth day was a solemn assembly, according to the ordinance.

Ezra has just read the law of Moses aloud to the whole assembly in Jerusalem, and the people have understood it, some of them for the first time in their lives. This passage is what they do next, and it turns on a rediscovery hiding in the text they were finally reading closely.

First, joy follows understanding. The people go off to eat and drink and share portions and celebrate, the passage says, precisely because they had understood the words that were read to them. Then, on the second day, the leaders keep studying, and they find something written that they had simply not been doing. The law commanded that in the seventh month Israel should live for a week in booths, temporary shelters of branches, to remember the wilderness. They do not file the discovery away for later. They proclaim it at once, send everyone out for olive and myrtle and palm branches, and build little shelters on their roofs and in their courtyards and in the public squares. The writer adds a startling line: from the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day, the people of Israel had not done this. A plain command had gone unkept for roughly a thousand years, and reading the book brought it back to light.

What follows is not guilt but gladness. There was very great joy, the text says, and Ezra read from the law every day of the feast. The rediscovered command, obeyed at once, produced delight rather than burden. What plain instruction have I been reading straight past for years, that might bring joy rather than weight if I actually did it?

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