Called To Order, Called To Joy

Why did they weep? Why did the people of Jerusalem grieve when Ezra read the word of God to them?

The people of Jerusalem had just achieved a major victory: rebuilding the wall around the city which had been destroyed during their seventy years of captivity in Babylon. They had foiled their enemies’ attempts to get them into trouble with the Persians, who ruled pretty much the entire Middle East. And Nehemiah himself was a true hero. He organized the people of the city to work in shifts, with armed men protecting them as they worked, and with trumpeters stationed at intervals around the wall to summon fighters if the locals tried a sneak attack on a lightly defended section. And, at last, they were finished. The wall was restored. They were safe from their enemies.

Nehemiah had been the cupbearer of the Persian king Artaxerxes, a couple of generations after King Cyrus had let the Jewish people go back to Jerusalem. Since a cupbearer was a position of high honor, Nehemiah lived in luxury as well as privilege. But he kept up a correspondence with those who had returned to Jerusalem, where things were not going well. After getting a letter with particularly bad news, he asked the king for permission to take a leave of absence in order to assist the people. Kind of like American Jews helping to build and defend the new nation of Israel in 1948. And just like Israel, things were not going well. Although the temple had been rebuilt - it couldn’t hold a candle to Solomon’s original temple, of course, but by this time there was no one left alive who could remember it - life was hard, they were under continual attack by the people who had moved in after the Babylonians had carried away the Jews over a hundred years before, and they were losing hope.

But now the tide had turned. The wall was built, they could lay down their arms and start having a life. They were safe. So why did they weep?

After they had completed the wall around Jerusalem, "Ezra the scribe gathered the people at the Water Gate and began to read to them from the Scriptures. He stood on a high platform, so that everyone could see and hear him." Since the people had pretty much forgotten their Hebrew during their time in Babylon and spoke Aramaic, like most of the people in the area, they needed a translator, "and so the Levites [the priests’ assistants] ...helped the people to understand." [v. 8:3,5,7]

At first, as they listened to Ezra, the people bowed down and began to worship God. But something else happened. They started to weep. Most commentators believe that they were weeping out of guilt for having strayed so far from the commandments of God. The majority opinion is that they wept out of guilt, and of sorrow, and of fear, and for the - who knows how many - years they hadn’t been worshiping regularly, keeping the festivals properly, and maybe not even eating kosher!

The people of Jerusalem knew that it was because of their father’s sins that they had been defeated by the Babylonians and taken off into exile. And they also knew that they had neglected the word of God; the newest generation hadn’t been brought up with Hebrew school and regular reading of Scripture, so they had a lot to feel guilty about. But the text tells us only that they wept, not why. And I think it’s just as likely that they wept from relief, not from fear. Because they had been faithful, in many ways. Unlike many of their brothers and sisters, they had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild, instead of staying in Babylon where it was safe. They had sacrificed, and labored, and endured. They may have been ignorant, and careless in their observance, but they had not turned aside to follow other gods.

Have you ever sat in your pew and wept, after hearing from God after a long period of feeling estranged, or dry, or lost? I have. And it’s not always out of guilt. More often, at least for me, it has been relief at being both known and safe, relief at knowing that I am home at last, being cared for, inside and out, by someone who knows and accepts me just as I am. Sometimes it is relief at being pointed in a new direction, or at having something that had been hidden or lost pointed out to me. So I think relief is just as likely as guilt. Because the people of Jerusalem were at last safe. Their God had helped them rebuild. He had stretched out his arm and brought them into a place where they could lay down their arms and once again be the people of God. They could worship in safety. It was a prodigal son moment, home at last.