QT: Long delayed response Nehemiah8:13–18 Week 32: 02/08/2023. Wed
Long delayed response
https://www.esv.org/Nehemiah8:13–18
Week 32: 02/08/2023. Wed
The omission was lengthy, to put it mildly, 500+ years?
Nehemiah 8:17 And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. (ESV)
But many things must happen before all of them "made booths and lived in the booths":-
(1) The leaders of households, priests, Levites, together with Ezra the scribe must come together to "study the words of the Law" (8:13). Studying a 1000 year old document involved much skill, starting from recognising the alphabet, words stringed from alphabet, sentence structure, and from there the speech-act that those sentences stringed together wished to convey to readers for them to act out;
(2) There must be proclamation of the application and publication of it "in all their towns and in Jerusalem" (8:15). The institutions of that time must also adopt and agree to applaud the authority, authenticity and applied goodness of God's laws;
(3) There must be personal buy-in, from the heart, more than lip service of God's teaching and reminders that God's people must recall and remember dearly the time when their forefathers lived in booth in their desert dwellings.
(4) The reading of the word was "from the first day to the last day" (8:18), a sustained feeding, not a flash in the pad on the heat of the moment of season.
REFLECTION: Are you participating in any joint effort to study, promote and practice God's word in the community that God has called you to belong to? Is the end result of your Bible study rejoicing in the LORD?
