This chapter surprised me a little because look at the first section…it’s made up of 27 verses. I’m not exactly sure why it was decided to split every three or four names into a separate verse, but I guess if you want to brag about memorizing a big chunk of verses then this would be an easy one. I’m really starting to wish I could speak to the people who decided on the numbering system, because although they helped us out so much, they also did some strange things.
I was underestimating the size and scope of what this revival that was happening. This is the entire Jewish nation (at least the part that had returned from exile) confessing their sin and completely rededicating their lives back towards God’s original plan. This is a pretty big deal. The first thing they start with is promising not to intermarry with Gentiles. It took me a while to accept this practice, because as believers we are supposed to “be in the world.” But its just marriage that he is asking them not to do, not to avoid any contact at all. I still don’t quite understand how a believer could get married to a non-believer. Your ultimate hope is found in completely different thing and it tends to make me question the salvation of the believer.
They make some pretty big commitments that aren’t commanded in the Pentateuch, such as giving a third of their income. My guess is that this was to help get the temple up and running again, but you have to wonder if they really thought that was sustainable. I wish it was, but people are greedy. I also thought about how they gave their best as a tithe to God and I wondered if we were as focused on that today as we should. I’ve always like CS Lewis’ quote that we should be forced to deny ourselves some luxury by tithing, otherwise we aren’t giving enough (paraphrase). I wonder what (if anything) we are giving up by tithing and if it is valuable enough to us to be considered a “firstfruit.”