Nehemiah 8:13 - Meaning and Application

We have here, first, the people’s renewed attention to God’s word. They had already spent most of one day praying and listening, yet they were not tired of that holy gathering. The very next day, even though it was not a festival day, the leading people came again to hear Ezra explain the law (Nehemiah 8:13). They found this more satisfying and more useful than any worldly pleasure or gain.

The more we spend time with God’s word, the more we should want to know it. If we understand it rightly and are moved by it, we will long to return to it again and again, saying, “How sweet are your words to my mouth!” Those who know the Scriptures well will still want to know them better. Here the priests and Levites came with the leaders to Ezra, the skilled teacher, to understand the words of the law, or, as the margin says, so that they might teach the words of the law. They came to learn for themselves, so they could be fit to teach others.

Notice two things. At first, Ezra’s humility had placed them beside him as fellow teachers (Nehemiah 8:4, 7). But after testing, they saw more clearly their own weakness and Ezra’s skill. So on the second day their humility placed them at Ezra’s feet as learners. Those who would teach others must first receive instruction themselves. Priests and Levites must be taught before they teach.

Second, we see the people’s quick obedience to the word in one clear case, as soon as they understood their duty. It is likely that Ezra, using the wisdom of his God that was in his hand (Ezra 7:25), read to them the laws that concerned the feasts of that month, especially the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:34; Deuteronomy 16:13). Ministers should preach what is true and good, but also what is timely, giving people the duty that fits the day.

Here they reviewed God’s command for the Feast of Tabernacles (Nehemiah 8:14, 15). They found it written in the law. Those who search the Scriptures carefully will find there many things they had forgotten or never thought about enough. This feast remembered how Israel lived in tents in the wilderness. It also pictured our life in this world, where we have no lasting home, and it pointed forward to the holy joy of the gospel church. The turning of the nations to Christ is foretold under this feast’s image (Zechariah 14:16). They would come to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, since they also have here no lasting city.

The feast was to be announced in all their cities. The people were to gather branches of trees themselves, and those in Jerusalem were to bring them from the Mount of Olives. They were to make booths, or shelters, from them, live in them as much as the weather allowed, and rejoice during the feast.

They obeyed this command faithfully (Nehemiah 8:16, 17). We read and hear the word rightly only when we do what it says, especially when it revives a duty that has been neglected. They sat in booths. The priests and Levites set them up in the temple courts. Those who had homes set up booths on their roofs or in their courtyards, and those without such space set them up in the streets. This feast had been kept before (2 Chronicles 5:3; Ezra 3:4), but never with such solemnity since Joshua’s time, when the people had first been settled, as they now had been settled again, in Canaan.

A person loves their house too much if they cannot leave it for a while in obedience to God’s command or God’s providence. But they did not only keep the outward ceremony, they also kept the heart of it, or else the ceremony would have meant little. They did it with joy, with very great joy, rejoicing in God and in his kindness to them. All holy feasts, and this one especially, were meant to be kept with gladness. That would honor God and strengthen them in his service.

They also kept listening to the reading and explanation of God’s word through all the days of the feast (Nehemiah 8:18). They used their free time well. No spare hour is better spent than in studying the Scriptures and speaking about them. At the Feast of Tabernacles, God had appointed the law to be read once every seven years. We are not told whether this was that year of release when that reading was to take place (Deuteronomy 31:10, 11). Still, they spent all the feast days in that good work, and on the eighth day they held a solemn assembly, as God had commanded, and ended the feast on the twenty-second day of the month.

Yet they did not stop there, because the twenty-fourth day was set apart for fasting and prayer. Holy joy should not keep us from godly sorrow, any more than godly sorrow should keep us from holy joy.