Scripture Daily

Context No. 980 of 4322 · Nehemiah

Context · Reflection

Nehemiah 7:46-56: in context

46The temple servants: the children of Ziha, the children of Hasupha, the children of Tabbaoth, 47the children of Keros, the children of Sia, the children of Padon, 48the children of Lebana, the children of Hagaba, the children of Salmai, 49the children of Hanan, the children of Giddel, the children of Gahar, 50the children of Reaiah, the children of Rezin, the children of Nekoda, 51the children of Gazzam, the children of Uzza, the children of Paseah, 52the children of Besai, the children of Meunim, the children of Nephushesim, 53the children of Bakbuk, the children of Hakupha, the children of Harhur, 54the children of Bazlith, the children of Mehida, the children of Harsha, 55the children of Barkos, the children of Sisera, the children of Temah, 56the children of Neziah, and the children of Hatipha.

This is a list buried in the register of those who returned from exile: the temple servants, called the Nethinim, the given ones. Verse after verse of names, the children of Ziha, of Hasupha, of Tabbaoth, of Keros, dozens of families whose one common feature is that they were the lowest-ranked workers of the temple, doing the menial labor, hauling wood and water, cleaning, serving the priests and Levites.

These are the temple's servants, and the fact that they are named at all is the point. The Nethinim were near the bottom of the social order, foreign-descended in many cases, doing the unglamorous grunt work of the sanctuary, and yet when the exiles came home to rebuild, someone counted them and wrote their family names into the permanent record alongside the priests and the nobility. They came back too. They could have stayed in Babylon; menial temple work in a ruined city was hardly an attractive prospect, and no one would have written songs about them. But they returned to serve, and scripture preserves their names. It is a quiet dignifying of the lowest workers in God's house, the ones history would forget, the ones who do the necessary, invisible labor that lets the visible worship happen. God's book has room for the servants' names. The people who only carried water made the register just the same.

Am I willing to be counted among the servants, doing the menial, unnoticed work of God's house, trusting that the God who recorded the Nethinim knows my name too?

Sources