Nehemiah: Broken over Brokenness

Nehemiah 1:1 - 2:5

This sermon begins a short four-sermon series drawn from the life and experience of Nehemiah. To get the most from this series, you would benefit from digging into the history of the post-exile period of biblical history. Reading Ezra will add information that precedes that which is recorded in Nehemiah, and then reading the three last prophetic books in the Bible (Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi) will add insight since these three prophets spoke their messages during this time period. I will have only limited time to deal with this history part of things in the sermons themselves, not to mention, it would bore most people.

As we may remember, the Jewish nation of Judah had fallen to the Babylonians and Jerusalem, along with Solomon's Temple, was finally destroyed in 586 BC with many of the leading Israelites taken captive back to Babylon to live. Jeremiah and others had prophecies that this captivity would last 70 years. During those years, the Jews taken to Babylon adjusted to their new life there and for the most part fared rather well. The books of Esther and Daniel record events related to the Jews living in the Babylonian, and later, Persian empires. Back in Jerusalem, the Jews who were not taken to Babylon as captives, settled into life there, many being assimilated in the larger culture. We meet up with these in Ezra-Nehemiah, mostly around the difficulty of inter-marriage.

In 539 BC, the Persians, under the leadership of Cyrus the Great, defeated the nation of Babylon. Almost immediately, Cyrus issued a decree allowing deported peoples to return to their homelands and encouraging them to rebuild the cities there, and specifically, the temples to their various Gods. Some Jews took him up on his offer and returned to Jerusalem. Ezra-Nehemiah record these Aliyahs (this is what Jews call returns to the Holy Land, even today). The first return in 538 was led by Zerubabbel and Jeshua with the aim of rebuilding the Temple, which was completed in 516 BC. The next return was led by Ezra in 458 with a goal at bringing spiritual reform and the third major return was led by Nehemiah in 444 BC with an aim at rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem. In all, over 50,000 Jews returned from their deportation.

This sermons series will be drawing from experiences during this time of wall building.

I discovered one thing of interest while rereading some of the history of this period. It relates to the purpose lying behind Cyrus' benevolent degree to allow peoples, not only Jews, to return to their lands and rebuild their cities and temples. In 1879 archaeologists working in ancient Babylon found a clay cylinder which has written on it an account of Cyrus' defeat of Babylon and the decree which he issued. Wikipedia has a good article about the Cyrus Cylinder. You can read a translation of the full text of the cylinder here. Scroll down to frames 34, 35 and 36. This is what I found to be very interesting regarding the motive of Cyrus. It seems he was being true to his pagan beliefs in many Gods. If he could do something nice for the gods of the nations around him, then maybe they would do something nice for him.

Doesn't sound much different from the bartering we do with God in his "modern" age!

Thanks for digging deeper.