Nehemiah has finished the building of the wall, so now he must begin to rebuild the rest of the city. Since Jerusalem is still in ruins and vulnerable, he orders that the city gates are only open during the busy hours of the day. The fact that there were so few houses reminds us that we are not talking about the old thriving city of Jerusalem or anything close to the one today. This was probably a sparsely populated, run-down city.
Nehemiah wants to begin organizing the people probably to focus on repopulating Jerusalem or perhaps it was more necessary for property rights. This list is almost identical to Ezra 2. You’re not going to find a huge amount of application out of the rest of this chapter, but I get two things out of it.
- God gifts certain people in certain ways and I am glad He does
- God is faithful to the children of Abraham
Someone thought it would be important to write down all of the names of the people who were returning from exile. I would not have been that person. It was probably important that it get done and it was definitely useful to Nehemiah. If God had gifted everyone like me then something like this never would have gotten done. But God made someone who had the foresight and diligence to take on this very tedious task.
God promised Abraham he would make them into a great nation. God promised David that the Messiah would come from him. God has been committed to Israel through these two unconditional covenants. Even though they were not faithful to Him and consistently broke the Mosaic covenant, leading to their exile, God remains faithful to his unconditional promises. If you study the history of the Jewish nation, it is amazing that it still exists today. Multiple times groups have tried to wipe them from the face of the earth and every time they fail. There is something special about a group of people who have faced genocide on multiple occasions, but continue to flourish. For me the phenomenon of the continuance nation of Israel is enough to attest to the existence of God but also it speaks to His unending faithfulness.