Today's Scripture Reading (October 8, 2020): Nehemiah 10
Names and positions
mean something. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with the person presented;
the name carries weight. When George W. Bush comments, that comment gets more
of a reaction then the quote of someone named Peter Bush, sorry Peter. Donald
Trump’s words make more of an impact than the beliefs of Jimmy Trump, with all
of my apologies to Jim. Oh, Jim might try to make the most of his Trump name,
even if he is not in the slightest way related to the Donald, but the name
means something.
Israel has
decided to “cut a covenant” with God. Covenant cutting had been a tradition for
Israel since the inception of the nation, and even in the days before the country
existed. God decided to “cut a covenant” with Noah, and in that covenant
promises not to destroy the whole world ever again with a flood. He cuts a
covenant with Abraham, promising that both the nation of Israel and the
eventual Messiah would descend from him. He made a covenant with Moses, and in
the process of that contract handed down the law, a declaration of what God
expected from Israel. God cut another covenant with David, once again promising
that the Messiah would come to power among his descendants.
The people
hoped that maybe there was one more covenant left in God. This would be the
covenant of Nehemiah. The priests, the Levites, and the leaders of the people
gathered together to sign one more contract with God. They would promise to
keep the nation pure of foreign influences, and in turn, they hoped that God
would protect them.
Nehemiah
proceeds to give us an extensive list of names. Most would have been important at
the time, but are now lost to antiquity. Even in the opening verse, we find a
name that we really can’t identify; we aren’t sure who this Zedekiah was. Even
the familiar names that follow are only echoes of other names that had preceded
them, like a Peter Bush or a Jimmy Trump. They are not the famous Zedekiah’s
and Zadok’s of history.
But what might
be even more important is the names that are missing from the document. Ezra is
not mentioned, despite the lead role that he took in the rebuilding of the
nation. Eliashib, the high priest of Israel, is also absent in what follows, as
are all of the prophets of the day, even though some of them must have been
present in the city at the time. Their absence might represent that there was
not a consensus that had been formed around the cutting of the covenant and
that these leaders opposed the sacred contract making at this time, thinking
that the nation needed to live out its commitment before making a promise with
God. But it might also mean that these leaders remained active behind the
scenes, but that they wanted the covenant to belong to the people. They didn’t
need the religious elite to decide for the nation. The people needed to commit
their own accord and concerning their own future.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Nehemiah
11
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