I was 23 when I moved to Germany for the first time. From my university studies, I was already reasonably conversational in the language, but it wasn’t until I lived in Berlin that I started to get a handle on German history and culture. Berlin, as it turns out, is exactly the right place for a foreigner to discover that there’s one date that sticks out remarkably in Germany’s last two centuries, to the extent that it’s been called the Germans’ “day of destiny”: the ninth of November.
Among other events: in 1918, the so-called “November Revolution” began on that day in Berlin when Germany was declared a republic. In 1923, the young Hitler’s coup attempt, the “Beer Hall Putsch,” was quelled in Munich. Fifteen years after that, synagogues and Jewish businesses across the country were terrorized in the Reichskristallnacht pogrom, and finally, famously, the Berlin Wall fell on the same date in 1989.
Striking as this is, it’s not so strange to think that further events taking place on a date that has become important for one reason can develop or even seriously complicate its original meaning. This year, German Thanksgiving (the first Sunday in October) fell just two days before the beginning of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, which was established in the Law of Moses as the same sort of observance—a feast of thanks for the completed harvest. Though it never lost that basic identity, this thanksgiving festival came to mean far more as the centuries in Israel’s history moved on.
It was the beginning of the seventh month in the Jewish religious calendar nearly 2,500 years ago as the eighth chapter of Nehemiah opens: the city walls of Jerusalem had been completely rebuilt after a whirlwind 52 days of construction (Neh 6:15). This meant far more to Nehemiah (governor of the Persian province of Judah) and his countrymen than improved security; they knew their Bible and sang songs like Psalm 48, which calls Jerusalem the “city of the Lord of Hosts” and Zion the “holy mountain,” where “God has made himself known as a fortress.” It was a city that God had rescued miraculously (see Isaiah 36–37), a city he had promised to protect forever: Jerusalem was meant to be “the joy of all the earth” (Ps 48:2).
The final verses of the psalm had surely gripped Nehemiah: it was God’s will that one should be able to “walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever” (Ps 48:12-14). This beauty and strength were to be a testimony to all generations of who God is and what he means to his people: grace and justice, joy and salvation, even everlasting life. In Jerusalem, all the hopes of a future for God’s people under the eternal dominion of the Messiah converged.
The rebuilding of the walls was never just about security. Nehemiah, together with Ezra and the other leaders of the Jews, were laying claim to God’s promise that Jerusalem would be known as the “holy city” (Isa 52:1), and what the people of Judah and Jerusalem do in Nehemiah 8 shows their grasp of what it means to establish Jerusalem as just that. If they want a holy city, they must recommit themselves to God’s standards—and if they want to do that, they need to know God’s will.
Four days after the completion of the walls, the seventh month begins, and no time could be more fitting for this renewed commitment to holiness. It’s the month when the festal calendar reaches its climax: the month starts with the joyful Feast of Trumpets, followed ten days later by the great Day of Atonement, when God’s dwelling would be purified of his people’s sins. And then, right in the middle of the month, begins the Feast of Booths—by Nehemiah’s time far more than a simple harvest festival.
Ezra, both a scribe and a priest (Neh 8:1-2), knows its meaning better than most. Part of the law for the feast required the Book of the Law to be read publicly there every seven years (Deut 31:10-13). It was surely fitting, too, that five hundred years before at this feast, King Solomon had dedicated his marvelous temple in this very city. What better time could there be to put God’s word back in its rightful place at the heart of the life of God’s people?
This is the whole idea behind the events in vv. 1-12: if the Jews want to see God’s promises fulfilled, then they have to know how to live as a holy people in a holy city with a holy temple. We can see this in the planning details—it doesn’t take place on the temple grounds, but on the public square at the Water Gate on the city’s east side (v. 1); God’s commands don’t apply to the sanctuary only, but to all of Jerusalem and its inhabitants, so admission must be open to laypeople as well as priests. A platform (v. 4) is set up to allow the most possible people to hear (v. 5).
Everyone who can be there is invited—only men had to attend the greatest feasts, and only elders attended other important meetings (such as the one in v. 13), but this event is for men, women, and children alike (v. 3). Every member of God’s people is to participate; each one has the right to know what God has to say. It’s especially important that the younger generation be included: the children and youth, too, who have little to no control over their own lives, are nevertheless obligated to keep covenant with God—and they need to learn how to do it.
In service of this purpose, the Levites don’t just read aloud; they interpret (v. 8). Many of the people likely didn’t speak Hebrew, at any rate not enough to understand the readings; they had been subjects of other empires for 140 years. The lingua franca was Aramaic, which had become many people’s first language. The word “clearly” (v. 8 ESV) alone already means more than “easy to hear” or even “in translation”: it means explained, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. The point is not for the people just to know what words the Law contains, but to grasp its meaning, context, demands, and promises.
It's clear to everyone involved how special the occasion is, and it’s clear to the attentive reader as well. What sort of a text lists the names of everyone on the stage with the reader (v. 4), along with the exact date and location? There’s a good example tucked away in the Bundestag, the German parliament building: the original manuscript of the Grundgesetz, the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. On one page, all the members of the parliamentary council who signed it are listed along with the date (May 23, 1949) and location (Bonn) of ratification. What happens in Nehemiah 8:1-12 is more than a nice Bible story—the text itself is documentation of a massively important historical event.
The Jews recognize this and act accordingly: they assemble and make a formal request for the law to be read (v. 1); they stand as the scroll is opened (v. 5); before the reading begins, Ezra offers a prayer of praise (v. 6), which the people confirm with a loud, double Amen, then prostrate themselves before God. For modern Christians, Bible reading can be something so normal and everyday—a blessing, to be sure!—that we easily forget the privilege it is to have God’s word available to us. Yet every time we open it, we experience just such an occasion: the near presence of God and the opportunity to renew our relationship to him.
The people of Jerusalem felt the weight of this encounter, and we would do well to ask ourselves what sort of an attitude or atmosphere is fitting to the circumstances. Their response sets a fine example in a number of respects: they’re eager to hear, attentive and convinced of the value of what they’re hearing; they’re reverent and respectful, knowing who it is who speaks in the Law.
There is one point, though, on which they’re admonished: they weep as they hear and understand (v. 9). Why is that? In the first place, keep in mind that “the Book of the Law” means all five books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy. It would have been impossible to read every word of those in half a day, particularly with live translation and exposition—undoubtedly Ezra used some reading plan or lectionary with selected excerpts from across all five books, and those excerpts would have been far more than just rules.
The whole story of the creation of the world, man’s sin against God and that sin’s terrible consequences, the call of Abraham and God’s making him into a great people, Israel’s sojourn in Egypt and deliverance out of slavery there, the covenant at Sinai and how it was broken almost immediately, the forty years of following God through the wilderness to the boundary of the promised land, and finally Moses’ exhortations and foretelling of their future history before his death beyond the Jordan—the assembly at Water Gate Square hears it all, and is confronted with the fact that not much has changed in all those years. They stand there as subjects of a foreign empire because their ancestors were consistently unfaithful and rebellious against their God. With too few exceptions, the history of Israel is tragic—yet Nehemiah and Ezra and the whole leadership of Judah say, “No! Don’t cry! Don’t be sad, don’t grieve!” (vv. 9-11)—“No, it’s time to party!”
Why?
Why not mourn? Is it not as bad as it sounds after all? Or is all this morbid introspection emotionally unhealthy? Or does all the weeping and wailing just get on the Levites’ nerves?
No, they give a reason: “This day is holy to our Lord” (v. 10). It’s a holy occasion—so go have fun! Does it seem strange? Here in Germany, there’s a tea company that markets a variety called “Kleine Sünde,” “Little Sin” (it’s blueberry-vanilla, if I recall correctly). Those of us from Christian-influenced Western societies get the point immediately: it’s so delicious that it must be sinful. We hardly notice how often this instinct is invoked, that anything particularly delightful can’t be really allowed; pleasure is sin, period.
Yet exactly what the tea merchants call a “little sin” is what Nehemiah commands: eat and drink the very best, the most delicious things in your larders. Make sure everybody does—and it’s not a sin, but a profound expression of holiness. How can that be?
It has everything to do with who God is and what he is like. The Lord is a God who gave Israel a church calendar in which (count them) one day a year is a required fast day, compared to three feasts at which the people are commanded to eat, drink, and be merry, the last of these (Booths) lasting a whole week. There is an important place for penitence, humiliation, and abstinence in life with God, of course, but he seems much more concerned to make clear that his presence is a place of joy: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps 16:11).
The very word “holy” is best understood as meaning “for God alone, dedicated to him”—and so people who are holy must grasp that God is like this and must reflect it by being able to feast well. Nehemiah himself insists on this, famously telling the people, “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh 8:10). It sounds lovely, but what does he actually mean? We might read it this way: you are strong when you have joy in you that comes from the Lord. No doubt that’s true enough, but it’s not the only way to read it.
The people’s strength (one might translate it “stronghold”) is “the joy of the Lord.” Think of the master in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25 who tells the good and faithful servant, “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt 25:21, 23). Or think of the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, where the father welcomes his wayward son with open arms—after the son has flushed his inheritance down the toilet—and he throws a party so loud it can be heard in the fields all around.
That is the joy of the Lord, and it really and truly is an aspect of his holiness. And because God is like this, we can come to him in the assurance that there really is nothing to fear in his presence. And whoever comes to him like this does receive joy from him, joy that is real strength.
This record of events two and a half millennia ago in Jerusalem is, then, an invitation to us all to enter into the joy of our Lord. If you’re not a Christian yet, know that you’ll have to be confronted with what the people then realized, that you haven’t lived up to God’s standard and still don’t even now—but if you do realize that, the wonderful news is that you are welcome anyway, if you will turn to God in Jesus Christ. You don’t have to fix yourself up in advance, you don’t have to get your life in order first. Jesus’ death is enough to make you clean; his life is enough to make you new; his joy is enough to make you strong.
If you are a Christian: do you ever consider that God rejoices when you are near him, particularly as you gather with his people? Do you realize that—if it’s not too impious to put it this way—it’s fun for him to have you there? Even, maybe especially, when you have to come to him confessing your sins and repenting, the truth that he is a God of joy needs to be present to your mind. In repentance, you get to put away the things that rob you of real happiness. People ought to be able to say of us Christians that of all people, we really know how to celebrate, how to party right. And that joy and pleasure in the company of God and his saints is holy.
Back to the text: the people listen, and they do what Nehemiah says. They lay the table, share their delicacies with each other, and “make great rejoicing” (v. 12). We’re given another reason for this rejoicing, besides the fact that they were told to: they rejoice because they have “understood the words that were declared to them”—even though what they heard grieved them at first, now they experience God’s revealed will as a precious gift.
The rest of the chapter proves this, as the civil and religious leaders gather the next day (v. 13) to make plans for the rest of this holy month based on the Law. There in what we know as the Book of Leviticus, they learn how the Feast of Booths is supposed to be kept—with booths, oddly enough—and it’s so ordered (v. 14-18). It seems to develop quite naturally out of their joy at having God’s word and understanding it that the people want to arrange everything according to it; their obedience only brings more joy (v. 17).
It's only at this point that we discover what a momentous experience this really is: it turns out that it’s been nearly a thousand years since the Feast of Booths was kept according to the Law of Moses—it took all that time for the people to rediscover the joy of the Lord such that they would really do what he said. They had to experience their second great deliverance from captivity through God’s intervention, see how all the hostility of their neighbors and internal contradictions in imperial policy couldn’t prevent the rebuilding of first the temple, then the city of Jerusalem. This is how they’ve experienced their God, and this is what makes obedience into holy joy.
This is, surely, what God intended the Feast of Booths, Israel’s Thanksgiving, to come to mean all along. Each year was a week of soaking in the goodness of what the Lord had done in making seed grow and fruit ripen, sending the rains in their season and showering blessings on his people. Every seven years was to be a week of remembering centuries of goodness and faithfulness and mighty deeds, of being reminded of their holy calling and the rightness of God’s revealed will. And again and again, something remarkable would happen—a temple dedicated, a city rebuilt—to bring them into the joy of their master in fullness, however fleeting.
At least since the German Reformation gave birth to the Heidelberg Catechism, it’s been a bit of a commonplace to identify thanksgiving as an engine—maybe the engine—of the Christian life. But it needs to be the right sort of thanksgiving, the sort that hears the voice of Jesus saying, “Do not mourn or weep!”: never a mere sober reckoning, a correct acknowledgement of a debt owed. It is just this sharing of good things at Christ’s table, a trial run for a feast at the end of the age, an entering into the holy place where there are pleasures forevermore.