BSD Blogging: Link to Lecture on Lesson 8

I'm tardy posting the link to my lecture last Thursday on Lesson 8 which covers chapters 9 and 10 of Nehemiah. Sorry about that!

Click here for A Firm Foundation: The Word, Worship and Confession. 

Chapter 9 is Ezra's penitential prayer on behalf of the people and chapter 10 is the renewal of the covenant between the people and God.

This week our lesson wraps up this study of Nehemiah, and the following week we begin the study of Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. If you've been wanting to join us, this would be the perfect time to do it! 

BSD Blogging: Samaritans of the 21st Century

Modern-day Samaritans celebrating Shauvoth on Mount Gezirim

In Nehemiah we read of the enmity between the Samaritans--especially their governor Sanballat--and the Jews during the post-exilic period when the Jews were returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding it.

We know that enmity continued in the time of the New Testament, but what happened to the Samaritans and Samaria? Inquiring minds want to know.

A few years ago I looked this up when I was teaching a class on Luke and got to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Much to my surprise I learned that a small group (about 750) of Samaritans continue to live in Israel today and practice their own unique religious tradition which is related to Judaism but relies on a Samaritan Torah and commentaries. Modern Samaritans claim descent from two tribes of Israel: Manasseh and Ephraim. They live near  Mount Gezirim, where tradition says Abraham took Isaac for sacrifice and which they say is the original holy site of the Israelites. 

Samaritans believe the Jews practice an altered and amended form of religion which developed after their return from Babylonian exile while Samaritans maintained the purity of the original worship and beliefs of the Israelites. Over the centuries the number of Samaritans declined due to bloody historical events and the forced mass conversion of many to Islam in the early Muslim period of Palestine. The 700+ Samaritans remaining in Israel today are members of five family groups and there are some Samaritans scattered around the world, including some in the United States. 

BSD Blogging: Community and Personal Threats

This week we are reading chapters 4 and 6 of the book of Nehemiah. It may strike you as odd to skip over chapter 5, but the themes of chapter 4 and chapter 6 are similar: threats against the community of builders in chapter 4 and personal threats against their leader Nehemiah in chapter 6. We'll study chapter 5 next week which recounts Nehemiah's fiscal reforms that addressed an economic crisis that also threatened the rebuilding effort. 

In reading some of the commentaries on these two chapters I learned that as a general rule the kings of the Persian empire did not permit cities within the empire to have walls around them. Walled cities made it easier for local strongmen to put their own armies inside the walls and rebel against the rule of the king.The Persian kings were constantly engaged in putting down rebellion in various parts of their empire and sometime it cost them their own lives when (as happened with Ataxerxes' father Xerxes) men close to them took advantage of their relationship to assassinate them. It was much easier for the king to send in troops from neighboring loyal provinces to put down rebellion and exert authority over a city if there was no wall that had to be breached. In Ezra we see the Samaritan troops easily entering Jerusalem to stop the rebuilding of the wall under orders from King Ataxerxes. We also know that the Persian kings were constantly engage

But God strengthens Nehemiah's influence with the King  so that he has reverses this long-standing policy and authorizes the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem. It's no wonder that Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem are disturbed by this change in direction and find it hard to believe that Nehemiah is being trusted to rebuild the wall and remain loyal. 

It seems to me that Nehemiah's unshakable faith in God's call to this task strengthened  both his reliance on his close relationship with the king so that he fearlessly brushes off the attempts to threaten both the builders and his own life and leadership. Which once again reminds us that God not only calls us to specific work for his Kingdom but also works through other people to support us in our tasks.