Nehemiah 8:9-18, The Joy of the LORD!

What a wonderful scene.  And what a significant scene: teaching God’s word to God’s people.

1.    Neh. 8:2: the assembly of men and women, all who could hear and understand. Perhaps children too young were cared for elsewhere.

2.    How did this work?

a.     Ezra stood on a platform, v4a, above the people (v5a).

b.    He was surrounded both sides by men (v4b).

c.     As he (Ezra) read, the people stood (v5).

d.    1^st Ezra blessed the LORD and the people responded (v6).

e.     Then other men – apparently priests and Levites – helped the people understand. They “gave the sense” (v7-8).

3.    What happened?

a.     The people wept (v9).

b.    The leaders encouraged them not to weep or mourn but to celebrate (v9-10). To rejoice!!! v12: Because they understood!

c.     This led to feast of tabernacles (v13-17).

d.    Every day the reading continued (v18), with tears of repentance.

                                                             i.      v9: “mourn” is the Hebrew “abal” meaning to mourn, lament. 1^st use: Gen. 37:34: Jacob mourning for Joseph.

                                                          ii.      v10: sorrow is “atsab” meaning to hurt, pain, grieve, displease, vex. 1^st use: Gen. 6:6: the LORD was sorry He made man. 2^nd use: Gen. 34:7: Jacob’s sons grieve Shechem’s rape of their sister.

The response of Ezra and Nehemiah to their grief was to tell them not to grieve.  “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn nor weep.”  You might find this to be strange but I think it makes a lot of sense.  The fact that they had read the Law, and the fact that it had an effect on the people, these things were reason to rejoice.  They were encouraged to rejoice and to enjoy a feast.  That is the context of an oft-quoted phrase, “the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

In the process of reading the Book of the Law they came across the instructions for Succoth (Feast of Tabernacles; Deut. 16:13-15).  One thing the passage in Deuteronomy said about Succoth was that it was a time to rejoice.  In the feasts of Israel, you can’t do much better for a good time than Succoth.  And at the end of the 8 day feast, they then celebrate Simchat Torah (“the joy of the Torah”), when they roll back the scroll of the Torah to begin again in the yearly reading.  That event involves loud and joyful singing and dancing.  We have been in Israel a couple of times on that night and the joyful sounds are a joy to hear.  There is a possibility the origin of Simchat Torah dates back to the intertestamental time.  The first description of the party with the dancing comes from the first century AD.