Nehemiah 7 – The Lord “put[s] into [Nehemiah’s] mind” the idea of assembling the nobles and officials to be enrolled by genealogy. All the returning families are lists with the number of descendants returned—first the people, then the priests, the Levites, the temple servants, descendants of Solomon’s servants and those who came up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub,…

Nehemiah 6 – Returning to the wall story, reports go back to Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem the Arab (all of them officials of the Persian provincial government who are enemies of Nehemiah), that the wall is nearing completion. Only the gates remain to be done (6:1).

The three try to get Nehemiah to come and meet with them, but he believes it is a conspiracy to do him harm, so he puts them off repeatedly. They continue to charge him with an intent to rebel against the…

Nehemiah 5 – There are community grievances. Jews complain about other Jews who have taken advantage of those who were in need of food. The poor have had to pledge their fields and vineyards to stay alive. The rich are charging interest and taking their brothers and sisters into servitude. These things make Nehemiah very angry. He brings charges against the rich nobles and officials, saying they were unlawfully taking interest from their own people. “The thing that you are…

Nehemiah 4 – Sanballat mocks the Jews saying, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore things? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish it in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish—and burned ones at that?” (4:2)



Sounds like a passage that might have inspired “will these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37)



Tobiah the Ammonite mocks the soundness of the stone wall, which at this point is up about…

Nehemiah 1 – Written in the first person, Nehemiah is, at the time of the return, a cupbearer for the Persian king Artaxerxes. The account begins in the year 446 according to a note in my Jerusalem Bible. He is living in Susa when his brother Hanani comes with other men from Judah with news of the terrible condition of the people there. Susa is one of the oldest cities in the world, in the Zagros Mountain area [southeastern Iran today] and home of both Daniel and…

Ezra 9 – Ezra, continuing his first person account, which was begun in chapter 8, says that officials approached him to tell him that the people of the land have not held themselves separate from the pagan people—the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzies, Jebusties, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They “have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons” (9:2). Ezra says, “When I heard this, I tore my garment and my mantel, and pulled hair from my…