Renew Your Faith with Prayer & Action (Neh 8:6)

Then Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.

How do you keep your faith strong and consistent? How do you avoid complacency that comes to all of us? Ezra and the people of Israel have an idea: taking the reading of scripture seriously through prayer and physical acts and gestures.

Background

Once the wall was finished, the author of Nehemiah treats us to a long list of names of the returning exiles (7.4-73). We then read three chapters about the spiritual renewal of the people. The section begins with a “covenant renewal,” which began with of a reading of the Law of Moses to the whole community of people in Jerusalem. This reading came at the request of the people: they had a desire for spiritual renewal. Moreover, it was not done at the Temple precincts, but in a common place in the city (the public square before the Water Gate).

What you might notice immediately upon beginning this chapter is that the person leading the ceremony is Nehemiah, but Ezra. These three chapters (8-10) sound more like they belong in the book of Ezra in chapters 7-10. But the work of Ezra and Nehemiah were not separate; they overlapped, and both worked on restoring Jerusalem and the people of God to their true position. And so this section fits perfectly as an introduction to the rest of Nehemiah after chapter 10.

Before he began reading the Law of Moses, Ezra offered a blessing upon God. The people responded with “Amen,” raised their hands, and bowed their heads in worship. 

Following the reading (or perhaps during it), priests and others were present with Ezra, to explain and interpret the law for the people when they did not understand. As they listened and learned what attitude, actions, and requirements there were, they began to cry. 

Meaning

There are some important issues to explore in this passage relating to prayer.

This was not the first covenant renewal that the Jewish people had held. They had been done periodically throughout the history of Israel after times of difficulty and neglect of their faith.