NEHEMIAH xii. 27-47.
A curious feature of the history of the restoration of Israel already met with several times is postponement. Thus in the days of Cyrus Zerubbabel leads up an expedition for the express purpose of building the temple at Jerusalem; but the work is not executed until the reign of Darius. Again, Ezra brings the book of The Law with him when he comes to the city; yet he does not find an opportunity for publishing it till some years later. Once more, Nehemiah sets to work on the fortifications with the promptitude of a practical man and executes his task with astonishing celerity; still, even in his case the usual breach of sequence occurs; here, too, we have interruption and the intrusion of alien matters, so that the crowning act of the dedication of the walls is delayed.
In this final instance we do not know how long a postponement there was. Towards the end of his work the chronicler is exceptionally abrupt and disconnected. In the section xii. 27-43 he gives us an extract from Nehemiah's memoirs, but without any note of time. The preservation of another bit of the patriot's original writing is interesting, not only because of its assured historicity, but further because exceptional importance is given to the records that have been judged worthy of being extracted and made portions of permanent scripture, although other sources are only used by the chronicler as materials out of which to construct his own narrative in the third person. While we cannot assign its exact date to the subject of this important fragment, one thing is clear from its position in the story of the days of Nehemiah. The reading of The Law, the great fast, the sealing of the covenant, the census, and the regulations for peopling Jerusalem, all came between the completion of the fortifications and the dedication of them. The interruption and the consequent delay were not without meaning and object. After what had occurred in the interval, the people were better prepared to enter into the ceremony of dedication with intelligence and earnestness of purpose. This act, although it was immediately directed to the wall, was, as a matter of fact, the re-consecration of the city; because the walls were built in order to preserve the distinct individuality, unique integrity of what they included. Now the Jews needed to know The Law in order to understand the destiny of Jerusalem; they needed to devote themselves personally to the service of God, so that they might carry out that destiny; and they needed to recruit the forces of the Holy City, for the purpose of giving strength and volume to its future. Thus the postponement of the dedication made that event, when it came about, a much more real thing than it would have been if it had followed immediately on the building of the walls. May we not say that in every similar case the personal consecration must precede the material? The city is what its citizens make it. They, and not its site or its buildings, give it its true character. Jerusalem and Babylon, Athens and Rome, are not to be distinguished in their topography and architecture in anything approaching the degree in which they are individualised by the manners and deeds of their respective peoples. Most assuredly the New Jerusalem will just reflect the characters of her citizens. This City of God will be fair and spotless only when they who tread her streets are clad in the beauty of holiness. In smaller details, too, and in personal matters, we can only dedicate aright that which we are handling in a spirit of earnest devotion. The miserable superstition that clouds our ideas of this subject rises out of the totally erroneous notion that it is possible to have holy things without holy persons, that a mystical sanctity can attach itself to any objects apart from an intelligent perception of some sacred purpose for which they are to be used. This materialistic notion degrades religion into magic; it is next door to fetichism.