Right now I feel like crap. The church I am hanging out with is looking at building a building and having a time of "hey lets pledge some money to a building". It's not as horrible as you might think, for a church that never passes an offertory plate the leaders up the front doing the asking always look far more awkward and uncomfortable than anyone in the congregation. Any way one of the things we're doing during this time is a study of Ezra and Nehemiah and whilst many people seem to be encouraged I feel like I am reading completely different books. Whilst sitting at home reading what it all might mean for us I found myself saying to the wall "but but but..." I started to write a response of sorts with some of my thoughts and below is what came out. To be honest it’s a mess. Some parts are too long, some parts to short and not referenced well. But, rather than polish it to proper essay standard I've chosen to publish it here in its very rough form.
How We Read The Old Testament:
Before reading Ezra and Nehemiah it’s important to look at how we read the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. As Christians We read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus and that colours what we read. For example, if we read that someone in the Old Testament made a sacrifice for sins we don’t necessarily go out and do that. Paul and the early church struggled over whether to let gentiles into Christianity and if they did should they be circumcised. Despite all that was written in the Old Testament and that Jesus said nothing about circumcision they decided there was no need for gentile Christians to ritually become Jewish first. When we read books like Ezra and Nehemiah we need to ask both, does this apply to us, as well as, how does this apply to us? It could be that the Christian response could be to do the exact opposite of what an Old Testament character did. This is really important for Christians to recognise as the Old Testament does not always have one consistent voice. For example 2 Kings 15 describes Uzziah as a good King but 2 Chronicles 26 describes him as a horrible King.
Some Background To Ezra and Nehemiah:
Historical:
Throughout Israel’s history the Jewish people have struggled with the various Empires that have dominated their region. Firstly with the Egyptian, then Babylonian, then Persian, then Greek, and finally Roman Empires. For a small tribal confederacy like the 12 Jewish tribes the wisest course of political action was to become a vassal (servant) state to the dominating Empire. Which meant paying tributes or taxes to the ruling Empire, being submissive to them rather than trying to stake out their own independence. This is expressly what God calls them not to do. They are called to live a very different life than those around them. Israel is told to have no King but God. On top of the Ark of the Covenant, where normally a King would seat, the people of God had an empty throne. Symbolising that they have no King, no King but God. When it came to worship, the surrounding cultures would do this in ornate temples. But, YHWH was happy to for God’s people to worship at a pile of stones. Specifically an unhewn (uncarved) pile of stones (Exodus 20). God could be met simply in nature itself. Accordingly, Moses meets God at a Burning Bush, Elijah meets God after a whirlwind, and Jesus goes out into the wilderness (rather than into the temple) before carrying out his mission. If this wasn’t hard enough in and of itself. God’s people are called to welcome the stranger and establish a Jubilee tradition that would ensure that no empire or ruling class could be established amongst themselves. No matter who had gained land and therefore the means of economic production and power, every 50 years it would all go back to square one again.
This was a hard calling and time and time again the people of God would find themselves enmeshed with the ruling empire. During the reign of Babylonian Empire Jeremiah rallied against the ruling religious elite wearing a yoke to protest military alliances for purposes of national security (Jeremiah 27), or his purchase of land on the eve of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem to signal that hope lay not in futile resistance but in God’s power to preserve the people through exile (Jeremiah 32). In this way the prophet Jeremiah fulfilled his vocation “to pluck up and break down” kingdoms (Jeremiah 1:10). Jeremiah would go on to claim that Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians was YHWH’s punishment for the elite’s reliance on imperial politics rather than on YHWH alone.
Throughout the ages Empires have sort to co-opt the indigenous religious elite to support the imperial program. These were the most powerful political people and perhaps the only people who could retain their power whilst dropping political ideals this is what happens in Ezra and Nehemiah as it did with the Babylonian Empire and will happen with the Pharisees and Roman Empire.
At the time of Ezra and Nehemiah it was the Persian Empire dominated. Having defeated the Babylonian empire the Persians were the super power of the region but, they continued to face pressure from Egyptians from the south. Persia needed military outposts at strategic locations. Jerusalem was on the edge of the Persian Empire just above Egypt, an ideal place for a military outpost to shelter troops, goods and weapons in the event of a campaign against Egypt. A rebuilt Jerusalem with a fortified wall would serve purpose perfectly. This is why Persia wants Jerusalem restored and why at the hint of a possible resistance the reconstruction is stopped or later (in Esther) the Persians would consider wiping out the entire race at the insolence of just once person.
Ezra Nehemiah and the New Testament:
As mentioned previously how we respond to various passages in the Old Testament is shaped by and viewed through Jesus. With that in mind it is worth noting neither Ezra or Nehemiah are never quoted in the New Testament (2 of only Old Testament 5 books. Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon being the others). On the other hand Isaiah (chapters 56-66 written during the temple reconstruction) stands in stark contrast, as we will soon see, to Ezra Nehemiah and is the 2nd most quoted book in the New Testament after Psalms.
It is also worth noting is that the Roman Empire modelled there way of controlling other peoples on the Persian Empire and later we will contrast how Jesus related to the religious elite and the empire with how Ezra and Nehemiah act. Like Jeremiah was to the Babylonian Empire, Third Isaiah and Micah is to the Persian, we will see Jesus will be to the Roman Empire.
A selected overview of Ezra and Nehemiah
Christians are usually pretty good at highlighting different texts throughout a book of the Bible in order to espouse a particular theological point of view. So we could read parts of Ezra and Nehemiah focusing just on some parts and walk away with a story about how the people didn't have a temple and through faith in God they got one. On one level that's fine, but what is not fine is too assume that this is the only thing that is being said in the text or that no other ideas or competing ideas are also in the text. With that in mind below is a summary of four important things happening in Ezra and Nehemiah (which before the 3rd Century AD were treated as one book). This is a minority report if you like. During this Minority Report I will refer mostly to the Old Testament books Ruth Esther Micah and Third Isaiah as they were also written during the time of the Persian empire.
Filthy Lucre
In the first chapter of Ezra all the riches that Solomon had gained and put in the Temple start coming back to them. Firstly it’s important to remember that Solomon built the temple using slaves to do it (1 Kings 9:15). He’s was also arms dealing, trading horses and chariots (1 Kings 10:29) and he was amassing store houses of Gold. 666 talents to be exact. (1 Kings 10:14), 666 in the Bible it is usually not a good omen, and here is that gold coming back again. But it is not the Jewish people who have got this gold back. Persia has taken over all that Babylon had and now they are “giving back” all these riches. I cannot imagine that The Persian Empire is giving this newly acquires wealth over because they feel sorry for the Jewish people. As we will see in Ezra chapter four, as soon as there is even a hint or rumour that these people will not be completely compliant with the will of the Empire construction is immediately halted. And, in Esther (the sequel to Ezra and Nehemiah) the refusal to comply, by just one man, triggers an order of genocide for the entire race of people. No the Persian Empire is ruthless and want a military post where they can keep an eye on the Egyptians which is why they don’t want just a temple but a temple with a fortified wall.
In Ezra Chapter 7 the Persian King Xercies describes himself as the "king of kings" and then later Nehemiah says may the King live for ever. Partly this is just towing the political line to get things done but they are also phrases that the Jewish people identified with God rather than some earthly King. The people are given a lot of money but it comes with conditions and compromise.
Throughout the ages Empires have sort to co-opt the indigenous religious elite to support their imperial programs. Ezra was the Persians’ man and they sent him back to Judah with royal silver and gold and imperial authority to rebuild the city in accordance with the Persian plan (Ezra 7.11-26).
Like the temple elites did with Babylon, despite Jeremiah's cries to do otherwise, they were doing again with the Persian Empire. They were getting cosy with the Empire. I can just imagine them thinking that it was the only way to “get things done”, to keep peace to keep order. Again the temple elites (Pharisees) would side with Roman Empire, if they didn't it is unlikely that they would have let them keep their temple. It is exactly these people that Jesus clashes with just like Jeremiah, Isaiah and Micah did. The Roman Empire like the Persian empire works through the religious elite, tolerates religious practices as long as they don’t infringe on the control of the Empire. The Pharisees will say we have “no king but Caesar” and like the religious elites in Nehemiah’s time they will become obsessed with cultic purity. More practical matters of justice like charging interest are not addressed in the initial reform as we will later see in Nehemiah 5.
Ethnic Cleansing
In the second chapter of Ezra, Ezra calls for an ethnic cleansing. It is as simple as that. Anyone who is a foreigner are kicked out. Anyone who does not have a pure lineage (had a foreigner somewhere amongst their ancestors) are kicked out. People without the correct documents proving their ancestries are kicked out. Refugees, widows and orphans are created. This is exactly the biblical triad of stranger/foreigner, widow and orphan that Jewish people are called on again and again to take care of. Those who refused faced forfeiture of all their property (Ezra 10.7-11). The Persian Empire found purer races easier to control. In chapter Ezra 9:1-2 the Persian leaders will complain that race not pure enough. Even people who had ancestors who had converted to worship YHWH long before they were born are excluded by order of the King (Ezra 4:3). The call from the Empire to ethnically cleanse happens again and again always by order of the King.
This is not unlike the Australian Aboriginal communities who do not have the same concept of half cast that westerners do, people are either in or not and on occasions an outsider can become part of the clan. But for the government it’s much easier to control Aboriginal once they are dived up into pure bred and not pure bred.
It is at this time in history that the story of Ruth is written down. At its heart Ruth is the story of a foreign woman who not only converted to Judaism, but would become part of the line of David and eventually Jesus. So in Ezra we have an ethnic cleansing that would have excluded King David and then Jesus. Jesus who would then go on to famously teach about the Good half-caste Jewish man (the Good Samaritan) the kind of person would of undoubtedly be excluded in Ezra’s ethnic cleansing program. But there are people who oppose. Amongst joyful shouts in Ezra chapter three there are a handful of people weeping, and in Ezra chapter ten Jonathan son of Asahel and Jahzeiah son of Tikvah opposed the decree.
It is also in this environment that Isaiah 56 is written.
Thus says the LORD: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. 2 Happy is the mortal who does this, the one who holds it fast, who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it, and refrains from doing any evil. 3 Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, "The LORD will surely separate me from his people"; and do not let the eunuch say, "I am just a dry tree." 4 For thus says the LORD: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, 5 I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. 6 And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant-- 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. 8 Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.
About this passage theologian Ched Myers writes “More than four centuries later, a young Jesus of Nazareth, preaching his first sermon, looked hard at his audience and proceeded to read from the heart of Third Isaiah’s oracle (Luke 4:18 parallels Isaiah 61:1). Jesus may have staked his entire ministry on a reappropriation of this prophetic tradition. He invokes it again at the culmination of his struggle with the public authorities in Jerusalem: In the midst of his dramatic “exorcism” of the temple, Jesus quotes directly from our text: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Luke 19:46 parallels Isaiah 56:7). It was this vision of radical inclusion that animated Jesus’ constant transgressions of the social boundaries of his day: eating with lepers, hanging out with women, touching the impure, teaching the excluded. More than anything else, it may have been what got him strung up.
Jesus most clearly addressed this issue in an oft-overlooked parable found in Mark’s gospel. “There is nothing which goes into you that can defile you; only that which comes out of you defiles you” (Mark 7:15). This teaching is another prophetic skirmish with the social function of the purity code. Mark’s Jesus is defending his disciples’ practice of sharing table fellowship with the “unclean” outsider (Mark 7:1-5) by insisting that “What goes into a person’s body from the outside cannot contaminate it” (7:18).” (Sojourners Magazine April 2006)
Ritual Triumphs Over Justice And Israel’s True Calling
In Ezra chapter three the sacrificial regime restored. This is in painful contrast to what has happened in the previous chapter. It clearly establishes that more important than looking after the foreigner, the widow or the orphan is ones ceremonial cleanliness. At this point Christians should be thinking “this is just like the Pharisees”. Caught up in the desire to see the temple rebuilt the religious elite have declared that what goes into your mouth is more important than what comes out. Fascinatingly for me we also have Older (and in ancient culture wiser) priests who know the history of the 1st temple weeping allowed as the temple is built. (Ezra 3:12-13). Later Jesus will cry “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.” (Matt 23:23) The overwhelming majority of people Jesus heals were those excluded from the temple, those who were ritually unclean. Those excluded in Ezra and Nehemiah.
It is in this environment that Micah is written. Chapter 6:6-12
6 "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" 8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? 9 The voice of the LORD cries to the city (it is sound wisdom to fear your name): Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city! 10 Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is accursed? 11 Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights? 12 Your wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, with tongues of deceit in their mouths.
Micah is clearly juxtaposing temple practice against acts of justice and that the Jewish people are giving away justice and mercy in order to obey the temple purity code.
In Ezra chapter 4 a subversive letter surfaces warning the King that if the Jewish people were to live to their calling of having no King but YHWH then “if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be reduced” (Ezra 4:13) Instantly the King of Persia stops the building. This underlines that the only reason to build is that it satisfies the needs of Persian Empire and first and foremost the temple is to be an asset to be used for their domination of the region.
A Temple For The Elite Made By The Elite
Not all of the Jewish people were part of the rebuilding program. The rebuilding was done by the elites while the peasants stayed behind to till the soil in Palestine. People who returned to Jerusalem were primarily of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi (it was not the 12 tribes) the tribe of Israel is excluded in Ezra chapter 6. In Nehemiah Chapter three in the list of who repairs what we see Goldsmiths, Perfumers, Priest, Rulers and their daughters, are doing the rebuilding it is a temple being built for the elites by the elites. We also hear exploited workers cry out in Nehemiah chapter four.
One of the characteristics of Nehemiah is that he starts off life enmeshed with power. In the stories of Joseph, Daniel and Moses the characters have roles of leadership and power foisted upon them and it is obvious that this is something they are not comfortable with.
In chapter four of Nehemiah when the poor are brought in to work they are working on the wall all day standing guard all night. They are not able to tend to their crops, they have no income and therefore are not able to pay their taxes. So, in chapter five we see people having to pledge or sell their fields to pay the tax, and after that end up as slaves.
Nehemiah Chapter 5:1-5
Now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish kin. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many; we must get grain, so that we may eat and stay alive.” There were also those who said, “We are having to pledge our fields, our vineyards, and our houses in order to get grain during the famine.” And there were those who said, “We are having to borrow money on our fields and vineyards to pay the king’s tax. Now our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children; and yet we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been ravished; we are powerless, and our fields and vineyards now belong to others.
What is often reported as “Nehemiah’s great act of kindness” to halt the Kings tax, a tax the elites did not have to pay (Ezra 7.24), and stop charging interest on loans (taken out to pay taxes and something Nehemiah did himself 5:10 even though it was expressly forbidden under Jewish law) is more likely a tactical move to quash an impending rebellion.
Theologian Wes Howard Brooke writes “Nehemiah ordered his elite colleagues to stop charging interest on loans of money and grain. While this is sometimes interpreted as an expression of how politicians can be persuaded to “do the right thing,” it actually only served to reinforce Persia’s stranglehold on their new province of Yehud (the former Judah).4 Nehemiah’s own imperial function was to supervise the city wall-building project, a necessary component of Persia’s hope of making Jerusalem into an imperial military base (Nehemiah 2). His outrage against his elite comrades among the project’s general contractors (note that Nehemiah admits that he, too, has been charging interest, Nehemiah 5.10) is aimed not at restoring justice, but at preventing a rebellion among the poor that would bring the imperial project to a halt. This is underscored by even the deeply pro-Nehemiah text admitting that the governor said and did nothing to stop the enslavement of people and the rape of women. He provides only what relief was necessary to keep the imperial machinery moving, much like raising minimum wages or the provision of food stamps does today to provide an escape valve to dampen the outrage of the poor and working class.” (http://www.jesusradicals.com/resisting-the-religious-elite%E2%80%99s-collaboration-with-empire-part-i-jerusalem-under-the-persians/)
Of course later on Jesus goes on to clash with both the temple authorities (behaving much like the religious elite in Nehemiah) but with the temple itself. Telling the woman at the well (a half caste) that one day everyone will not worship at the temple and describing his own body as the temple.
Conclusion
Now two and a half thousand years later the question is should a Christian church, like Ezra and Nehemiah, build a building? Maybe, maybe not. Ezra, Nehemiah, Micah, Isaiah, Esther, Ruth and then of course the Gospels warn us that we can become so obsessed with what a building could mean that we might lose focus on what is really important, what our true calling is.
Ezra and Nehemiah teaches us that it is easy to get caught up in a building program and tainted money should not be used no matter how much good we think can be made from that. In Mark chapter 10 a rich young ruler approaches Jesus. He is someone with power and influence and capital. Someone who can get things done. Someone who could turn Jesus’s rag tag bunch of wilderness wanderers into a serious movement. But, Jesus knows that the rich young ruler has got this money by defrauding others and he won’t have a bar of it. The money has to all be given back to the poor.
Part of our calling in the rich west is a call to love the poor, the widowed, the orphan and the refugee. To love the 98% of the world who don’t have things as good as we do. Our own wealth has far more to do with our place of birth than how hard we have worked. We are born into a system where our trade system defrauds others. An hour of labour from someone in the third world is worth a mere fraction of our own. With everything we individually and collectively spend our money on there is an opportunity cost, there is something else the money could have gone to. To give money to a project that will benefit those in the tiny minority who are better off than is something I cannot do. Not until the cost of building is less than the cost of renting now or in the foreseeable future and when there is no other conceivable way of being church together.
