Nehemiah8chapter 8

Nehemiah 8:1-3

The demand comes from below: the people gather as one man and ask Ezra to bring the book, and he reads from morning until midday to men, women and all that could hear with understanding, and the ears of all the people were attentive. The date is the first day of the seventh month, the feast of trumpets of Lev 23:24, so the reading itself is the day's trumpet. The wall was finished six days earlier at 6:15; the first public act inside it is Scripture read aloud.

Nehemiah 8:4-6

The pulpit of wood, made for the purpose, is the first in Scripture, built so that the book could be seen and heard by a street full of people. When Ezra opens the book all the people stand up, and the blessing is answered with Amen, Amen, lifted hands, and faces to the ground: a whole liturgy of the word in two verses, reverence bracketing reading. Thirteen named men stand beside him, the ministry of the book already a shared office.

Nehemiah 8:7-8

The Levites move among the standing people, and 8:8 states the method in the sentence that occurs nowhere else in Scripture: they read distinctly, and GAVE THE SENSE, and caused them to understand the reading. The readings on what giving the sense meant are named: rabbinic tradition, dated to the Talmudic era, places the origin of the Aramaic Targum in this verse, translation for a people whose tongue had shifted in Babylon, while the bench reads exposition, explanation added to reading; both may be true at once and neither is settled here. Reading plus explanation to the assembly is the shape the synagogue service and the expository sermon descend from, a legacy the commentators draw and name as theirs.

Nehemiah 8:9-10

The people weep at hearing the law, the first honest response of a generation measuring itself against the book, and the leaders forbid the grief: this day is holy, and holiness here commands a feast. The instruction has a social half, send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared, so the joy is distributed before it is enjoyed. Then the sentence that occurs nowhere else in Scripture: THE JOY OF THE LORD IS YOUR STRENGTH, joy not as the reward of strength but as its source, and Spurgeon preached the text by that name.

Nehemiah 8:11-12

The Levites still the people as one quiets mourners, and the day turns to eating, drinking, sending portions and great mirth. The narrator gives the reason in the last clause: BECAUSE THEY HAD UNDERSTOOD the words that were declared unto them. Understanding is the ground of the joy, which is the whole chapter's argument in one subordinate clause.

Nehemiah 8:13-15

on the second day: On the second day the leaders come back for more: the chief of the fathers, the priests and the Levites gather to Ezra, even to understand the words of the law, the teachers putting themselves under the book before they teach it. What they find written is the feast of booths, commanded by Moses and waiting in the text, and the proclamation goes out to fetch branches from the mount. Obedience here is discovered by reading, the pattern of Josiah's book repeated without a king.

Nehemiah 8:16-17

Booths rise on roofs, in courts, in the courts of the house of God, in the street of the water gate: the city that just rebuilt its wall camps inside it in shelters of branches, acting out the wilderness in the middle of its achievement. The narrator's measure is verified against the floor: SINCE THE DAYS OF JESHUA THE SON OF NUN unto that day had not the children of Israel done so, a feast recovered across nine hundred years by reading the book, and there was very great gladness. The name is its own quiet echo, for the Jeshua of the return stands where Jeshua the son of Nun once stood.

Nehemiah 8:18

Day by day, from the first day unto the last, he read in the book of the law of God: the feast's seven days each carry their reading, and the eighth day closes with the solemn assembly according unto the manner, which is Lev 23:36 kept to the letter. The week that began with one morning's reading ends as a rhythm of daily Scripture, the recovered practice already becoming a habit.