Remember Me! The Meaning of Memoir

Nehemiah 13:30-31

Nehemiah ends his memoir with massive drama that is hidden between the lines. The final wrap up includes a list of his accomplishments and also a scene that hints at the backstage of his political-religious wars and the ongoing battle to maintain societal order.

At some point he goes back to the Persian mainland to report to the king. When he gets back to Jerusalem he realizes that a few things have gone very wrong.

First, the chamber in the temple that was supposed to store the sacrificial offerings of incense and precious oils, donated by the public, has been repurposed. The oils were no longer there because the people, despite the pledge stopped donating.

But not that’s the worst part.

Instead of sacred storage - the wing was used as a guest suite for Tobias the Ammonite, one of the local leaders described earlier in the book as the enemies of Nehemiah - opposing the building the wall and the ban on foreign wives.

Why does Tobias get a suite in the temple? He’s a member of the family of the High Priest Elyashiv - their children are married.

This union is likely a familiar story of elites and their unions through marriage to establish stronger business ties. This was part of the purpose of the ban against such marriages and the establishment of the ‘sacred seed’ covenant.

The High Priest’s sons’ marriages to a local non-Judean women is already mentioned in the Book of Ezra - they are among those listed as assimilated, who publicly recanted - but with no mention of actual divorce or dissolution of the marriage.

Clearly the drama continued. Nehemiah finds Tobias living in the temple! Clearly it is not just a convenient decision but an attack on the religious regulations and political-social distance that he and Ezra have been working on.

Nehemiah wastes no time:

וַיֵּ֥רַֽע לִ֖י מְאֹ֑ד וָֽאַשְׁלִ֜יכָה אֶֽת־כׇּל־כְּלֵ֧י בֵית־טוֹבִיָּ֛ה הַח֖וּץ מִן־הַלִּשְׁכָּֽה׃ וָאֹ֣מְרָ֔ה וַֽיְטַהֲר֖וּ הַלְּשָׁכ֑וֹת וָאָשִׁ֣יבָה שָּׁ֗ם כְּלֵי֙ בֵּ֣ית הָאֱלֹהִ֔ים אֶת־הַמִּנְחָ֖ה וְהַלְּבוֹנָֽה׃

I was greatly displeased, and had all the household gear of Tobiah thrown out of the room;

I gave orders to purify the rooms, and had the equipment of the House of God and the meal offering and the frankincense put back.

Nehemiah 13: 8-9

Nehemiah’s battles are not just with Tobias - but with the High Priest and the priestly order that seems to be hoarding its goods and establishing its position in the temple even as some of them are advocating for assimilation with the people of the land. This hints at deep idealogical differences that will play out over time.

The losing players here are the Levites - their funding was cut by the people, despite the promises of monthly support in the previous chapter - mentioned explicitly in the Amana - the pact the people signed, and then ignored.

The tensions between Priests and Levites - even though they are from the same tribe - may indicate a deeper schism between classes and guilds, attitudes and ideologies.

Nehemiah doesn’t just restore the storage rooms to their former use - but also makes sure that the people resume their donations and fill the rooms with what they were built for - maintenance of the temple, daily incense and whatever it takes to keep the fires burning, the temple open, and the city humming along.

Other battles that he mentions here are the sacred sabbath - he insists no commerce takes place on this holy day. And of course - the fight on intermarriage. Horrified by the fact that many of the children of these mixed-marriages barely speak ‘Jewish’ he insists on pure-bred unions although there is no evidence of any doable decisive legal action to prevent these popular unions from happening.

These ideological battle, like the many others he has taken on, will go on. We still deal with them today.

So how does Nehemiah sum up his memoir?

His final words are about the stability of the system he’s worked hard to build, as promised to the Persian king at the beginning of the book. But it is to the King of Kings that he dedicates his final words - pleading to be remembered kindly for his actions and intentions:

וְטִֽהַרְתִּ֖ים מִכׇּל־נֵכָ֑ר

וָאַעֲמִ֧ידָה מִשְׁמָר֛וֹת לַכֹּהֲנִ֥ים וְלַלְוִיִּ֖ם אִ֥ישׁ בִּמְלַאכְתּֽוֹ׃ וּלְקֻרְבַּ֧ן הָעֵצִ֛ים בְּעִתִּ֥ים מְזֻמָּנ֖וֹת וְלַבִּכּוּרִ֑ים זׇכְרָה־לִּ֥י אֱלֹהַ֖י לְטוֹבָֽה׃

I purged the temple and city of every foreign element, and arranged for the priests and the Levites to work each at his task by shifts,

and for the wood offering to be brought at fixed times and for the first fruits.

O my God, remember it to my credit!

Nehemiah 13:30-31

Jacob Wright and Benny Lau, two keen readers who’ve been our guides through this journey help to wrap this up:

In Why the Bible Began, Jacob Wright frames the tone of the books’ ending and why the focus is on the pack and the book - and less on the political identity:

“The signing of the pact is followed in the book by the festive dedication of the wall, marking the completion of many years of building activities in Jerusalem. However, the story does not conclude on that celebratory note. Instead, the final chapter describes several religious and social reforms that Nehemiah undertakes because the community failed to abide by the terms of their pact. This anticlimactic conclusion is in keeping with the general tenor of Ezra-Nehemiah. This book portrays no glorious triumphs, no retrieval of lost glories. It does not recount the restoration in mythic proportions, with Judah rising from its ruins and returning to its former glory.

The tale of Judah’s comeback is not spectacular, and in telling it, the authors went to great lengths to ensure that their readers resisted the temptation to mythologize the events. They depicted a much more modest restoration, a life lived in the shadow of foreign rule, without heroes like David to save the day.

In keeping with the consciousness of defeat they sought to cultivate, the scribes who shaped the biblical corpus identify this age as not only a formative era but also an abiding one.

For a community negotiating its survival in a world empire, such concern with identity and tradition is to be expected. In the absence of clearly demarcated, political borders, and a native Judean army to defend those borders, its members notably turn to their written traditions. By means of ancestral texts, and sophisticated methods of interpretation, they demarcate their identity and determine how they should proceed into an unprecedented future.”

Rabbi Benny Lau writes:

“Nehemiah concludes his memoir with the pride of management - the cleansing of all foreign aspects from the national agenda, the efficient governance of the temple, the organizing of the priestly and levitical orders, and the security of ongoing maintenance for the temple’s sacrificial system. His final chapter is the report of a director before leaving his shift, reviewing his achievements and grading himself.

Second Temple Jerusalem will be a very political city, full of sects and intrigues, but not a broken down hovel. Nehemiah is the great manager who did that, able to create a dramatic shift that turned the city after 150 years to a capital city, the holy city of a thriving temple.”

Did Nehemiah go back to Shushan once his tasks were completed? We will never know.

Ezra’s tomb is a famous pilgrimage site to both Jewish and Muslim seekers but Nehemiah left behind a different kind of legacy - a book and a wall, the building blocks of a society that against all odds, rebuilt its ruins and continued, with clashes, to keep the fire lit on its main altar of hope.

Where does the story go from here?

The last two books of the Hebrew Bible await - Chronicles beings tomorrow - a repeat of the history from the very beginning, with clear historical agenda and some surprising differences from what we’ve read so far. Whoever wrote these final books had their eyes on history, with some revisionist ideology thrown in -- giving us hints on how they wanted us to think of what matters and who we are.

Get ready for the final round, below the bible belt.

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