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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53 read within the book as a whole
  • Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 05:42:23 -0500

Dear Liz,

It is still god-breathed and useful.
The point is to understand what is being said.
The point of the author of Ezra-Nehemiah is that the torah
(Moses' torah this time, since we're in the Hellenistic period now)
must be protected at all costs. Everything foreign and impure
must be kept out. The author used Nehemiah's memoir to make the
larger point. He embedded the memoir in the story he wanted to tell.
Nehemiah's memoir is just a tool to the larger story. It is the
larger story that is didactic.

HH: You are right that these are valid meanings for Ezra-Nehemiah if one is summarizing the books in brief. But Ezra-Nehemiah is a chronicle about the return of the people from captivity to israel and the recommencement of national life. Ezra-Nehemiah gives us slices of life that have additional meanings.
Nehemiah devotes six chapters to building the wall of Jerusalem, which allows security for the people. You might want to subtract chapter 5 from that grouping, but the context of the wall's construction in poverty and danger makes the condition of the people sold into slavery so poignant. I think the meaning of Nehemiah 1-6 is just what it appears to be. Nehemiah is one of the admirable characters of the Bible. The readers are supposed to appreciate him as a leader who feared and trusted God. They are supposed to admire the bravery, hard work, and endurance of the people in undertaking this task of rebuilding the wall. The whole episode is great. I don't see coercion on Nehemiah's part, far from it. God laid this idea on Nehemiah's heart (Neh 2:12), and He evidently laid it on the heart of the people to cooperate.

HH: In the OT the narrator is assumed to present the actual situation, the viewpoint from God's perspective, as it were. This is true whether Ezekiel is narrating, or Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Zechariah, Daniel, Haggai, Ezra, Moses, or any of books of the prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings). it is true of Esther and Chronicles. Yes, Nehemiah is giving us his perspective, but it is a reliable perspective. If he says the people had a will to work, that is part of the narrative structure of the book, and we are to accept it as a fact. If he claims the people were encouraged, saying that the rebuilding should start, then that is true.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard





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