F. Nehemiah’s Final Reforms (13:4-31)
Following the events of chs. 7-12, everything else seems anticlimactic. After the joyous dedication of the walls of Jerusalem one might think that the Jews, like storybook characters, lived happily ever after. This chapter serves as a reminder that life with all its temptations and compromises goes on.
The Nehemiah memoir records a series of problems the governor faced in his second term of office. After his initial twelve-year term (13:6; cf. 5:14), he returned to Babylon for an unspecified period. Upon arriving back in Jerusalem he discovered that time had dulled the Jews' memory of the great events that marked God’s decisive actions to reestablish his people in the land. The result was the reappearance of sins they had sworn to renounce (see 10:30-39). The prophet Malachi, ministering at about this time, faced many of these same problems.
In his energetic style, Nehemiah addressed three problems in turn. Each involved a rebuke of the guilty parties, and each was punctuated with prayer (13:14, 22, 29). The verb translated “rebuked” in 13:11 (Heb. rîb̠, see 5:7; 13:17, 25) is typically used in the context of a lawsuit. It was often employed by the prophets to describe God’s dispute with his wayward people who have broken the covenant.
The first problem concerned the temple and cult (13:4-14). His old nemesis, Tobiah, capitalizing upon his intimate connections in Jerusalem (see 6:17-19) and aided by a priest, had acquired a room in the temple complex itself. Nehemiah’s reaction, comparable to Jesus' cleansing of the temple, was literally to throw the interloper out, reaffirming the principle of separation from anything or anyone foreign. The other two problems involved blatant compromise of Sabbath observance (vv.15-22; cf. 10:31) and new cases of mixed marriages (vv.23-29; cf. 10:30; Ezr 9-10). Nehemiah acted with righteous indignation to curb these abuses.
The final verses of the book record Nehemiah’s own evaluation of his accomplishments. He says nothing of his work on the walls, that for which most remember him. Rather, his epilogue mentions the purification and organization of priests and Levites and provision for regular offerings. These are among the primary themes in the covenant renewal oath of ch. 10.
This correlation suggests an important theological truth for the Christian in this final chapter. Judaism, which properly begins with Ezra, is characterized as a religion of the Book. Ezra’s reading of the Law and the covenantrenewal ceremony of Ne 8-10 were formative events in the development of Judaism. Yet this book ends with an admission that the Law and the old covenant are not in themselves sufficient to maintain a people in close relationship with God. Elsewhere the OT speaks of a new covenant, based not in adherence to a written code, but on an intimate knowledge of God (Jer 31:31-34). Thus the book of Ezra-Nehemiah points forward to this new covenant, realized in the person of Jesus Christ, with the promise of divine enabling for God’s people truly to live as God’s people.