Nehemiah 7 – Study

For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Nehemiah 7:4-73

4 Now the city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it, and the houses had not yet been rebuilt. 5 So my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials and the common people for registration by families. I found the genealogical record of those who had been the first to return. This is what I found written there: 6 These are the people of the province who came up from the captivity of the exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken captive (they returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town, 

64 These searched for their family records, but they could not find them and so were excluded from the priesthood as unclean. 65 The governor, therefore, ordered them not to eat any of the most sacred food until there should be a priest ministering with the Urim and Thummim.

66 The whole company numbered 42,360, 67 besides their 7,337 male and female slaves; and they also had 245 male and female singers. 68 There were 736 horses, 245 mules, 69 435 camels and 6,720 donkeys.

70 Some of the heads of the families contributed to the work. The governor gave to the treasury 1,000 darics of gold, 50 bowls and 530 garments for priests. 71 Some of the heads of the families gave to the treasury for the work 20,000 darics of gold and 2,200 minas of silver. 72 The total given by the rest of the people was 20,000 darics of gold, 2,000 minas of silver and 67 garments for priests.

73 The priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the musicians and the temple servants, along with certain of the people and the rest of the Israelites, settled in their own towns.

A. Find Out:

1. What was the state of Jerusalem at that time? v.4
2. So what did the Lord do? v.5a
3. And what did Nehemiah find? v.5b
4. What was the list he found? v.6
5. Who had what sort of problem? v.64
6. How were they limited? v.65
7. How many people were counted? v.66
8. Who gave what? v.70-72
9. Who settled where? v.73

B. Think:

1. What do you think was the point of all this counting?
2. What does it show us?

C. Comment:

  The city shape has been completed – the walls and gates are there – but inside the city they is still devastation (v.4) from Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction decades before. But a city isn’t just buildings, it is people and so the Lord puts it in Nehemiah’s mind to record just who have come back (v.5a) and so he looks in the records and finds a record of the first people who came back (v.5b). This is essentially the same as that found in Ezra 2 with about 20% differences which may be explained by assuming that a cipher notation was used with vertical strokes for units and horizontal strokes for tens, which led to copying errors. Bearing in mind the circumstances at the time it is not terribly surprising!

  Thus we see first of all lists of the people, then followed by all those who served in the Temple in some way and then, sadly, those who were Israelites but had no documentation to prove it (v.61-65). We thus assume that most had kept records. We see the total number but it would appear that most lived in the towns round about Jerusalem (v.73) rather than in the broken down city. Later (Ch.11) Jerusalem would be repopulated but for now few actually lived there.

D. Application:

1. People are important in God’s economy.
2. A Christian – your name is in the Lamb’s book of Life (Rev 3:5,21:27)