Nehemiah 12:27-30

5. The Levites were assembled for the dedication of the wall.

TEXT, Nehemiah 12:27-30

27

Now at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought out the Levites from all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem so that they might celebrate the dedication with gladness, with hymns of thanksgiving and with songs to the accompany ment of cymbals, harps, and lyres.

28

So the sons of the singers were assembled from the district around Jerusalem, and from the villages of the Netophathites,

29

from Beth-gilgal, and from their fields in Geba and Azmaveth, for the singers had built themselves villages around Jerusalem.

30

And the priests and the Levites purified themselves; they also purified the people, the gates, and the wall.

COMMENT

The rest of the chapter, clearly from Nehemiah's hand (Nehemiah 12:31), describes the service of dedication for the wall, completed in Nehemiah 6:15. How much time has elapsed in between is hard to say. The delay may have been caused by the concentration on the reading of the Law in the intervening Chapter s. Or it may have been necessitated by the logistics of preparing a sufficiently grand and impressive program. Or they may have wished to wait till the city was sufficiently occupied (chapter 11) and the walls were adequately manned. It is people who are being dedicated more than things, for flesh and blood is as necessary to walls as are stones, and the act of dedication was more spiritual and psychological than physical. The greatest value of the wall also was psychological, as it furnished success and encouragement to a dispirited people. In Adenay's words, This act, although it was immediately directed to the walls, was, as a matter of fact, the reconsecration of the city. [81]

[81] Adenay, op. cit., p. 329.

Nehemiah 12:27 is a reminder that many of the Levites lived in surrounding towns, where they either occupied themselves with teaching the Law or with making a living in the light of the reality of inadequate support.

Nehemiah 12:28-29 equate the singers with the Levites: they were a subclass of them in Ezra 2:41.

In Nehemiah 12:30, before dedication there is a need for purification from defilement. Even the Tabernacle, and now the Temple, had their laver for cleansing the priests and the offering before sacrifices were made. As an illustration of the point previously made, note that the people are cleansed along with the wall.

WORD STUDIES

PURIFY (Nehemiah 12:27): the basic idea of the Hebrew word is brightness or splendor; i.e. it causes something to shine or be bright. It signifies to be or become clean or pure: to cleanse or purify. It can be done for three reasons. (1) Of physical purity: Ezekiel 39:12 describes the cleansing of the land from corpses. Numbers 8:6-7 speaks of washing and completely shaving the Levites to prepare them for God's service. (2) Of ceremonial purity: Ezekiel 43:26 speaks of cleansing the altar for the new Temple of which Ezekiel had a vision, A leper who had been healed would be purified in a ceremony administered by a priest: Leviticus 14:11. (3) Of moral purity: Malachi 3:3 uses the figure of purifying metal from dross as a parallel of a person's moral cleansing. Jeremiah 33:8 speaks of cleansing through God's forgiveness.

DEDICATION (Nehemiah 12:30: Hanukkah): Sometimes a study of word derivations leads one down some strange and unexpected paths. There are three words formed from the same base, all of which have one common meaning: to choke. Apparently from this come the ideas of being narrow or of closing. A collar is placed around the neck of an animal and it is strangled down so that it can be initiated into man's service and trained for usefulness: thus it becomes dedicated, or consecrated to certain purposes. Each of the italicized words is a translation of one of the forms of this word. Our English word, neck, is derived from this same base (note the N and K, also in Hanukkah). So a wall was collared for man's service.