Nehemiah 8:2 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Nehemiah 8:2
And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.
the new moon · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Leviticus 23:24 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowi…
Malachi 2:7 For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.
Numbers 29:1 And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blow…
Deuteronomy 17:18 And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is b…
Deuteronomy 31:9-13 And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and unto all t…
Isaiah 28:9 Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts…
Acts 15:21 For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day.
2 Chronicles 17:7-9 Also in the third year of his reign he sent to his princes, even to Ben-hail, and to Obadiah, and to Zechariah, and to Nethaneel, and to Mic…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Nehemiah 8:1-8
We have here an account of a solemn religious assembly, and the good work that was done in that assembly, to the honour of God and the edification of the church.
I. The time of it was the first day of the seventh month, Neh 8:2. That was the day of the feast of trumpets, which is called a sabbath, and on which they were to have a holy convocation, Lev 23:24; Num 29:1. But that was not all: it was one that day that the altar was set up, and they began to offer their burnt-offerings after their return out of captivity, a recent mercy in the memory of many then living; in a thankful remembrance of that, it is likely, they had kept this feast ever since with more than ordinary solemnity. Divine…
All that could hear with understanding - Infants, idiots, and children not likely to receive instruction, were not permitted to attend this meeting; nor should any such, in any place, be ever brought to the house of God, if it can be avoided: yet, rather than a poor mother should be deprived of the ordinances of God, let her come with her child in her arms; and although it be inconvenient to the congregation, and to some ministers, to hear a child cry, it is cruel to exclude the mother on this account, who, having no person to take care of her child while absent, must bring it with her, or be totally deprived of the ordinances of the Christian Church.
Upon the first day of the seventh month…
And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation,.... Having a perfect copy of it, which the people knew, and therefore desired him to bring it; he brought it either out of his own case or chest, or out of the temple where it was laid up; some restrain this to the book of Deuteronomy; this he produced in sight of the whole assembly:
both of men and women; adult persons of each sex, who met promiscuously; though Grotius thinks the women had a separate place:
and all that could hear with understanding; all under age, who yet were capable of hearing the law read to some advantage to them:
upon the first day of the seventh month; the month Tisri, answering to part of September and…
The Church Fathers
And the seventh month came, etc. When Nehemiah sought to provide and arrange who should dwell in the city they had built, the seventh month arrived; for they were far away. For since the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the sixth month, no more than five days remained until the beginning of the seventh month. This seventh month, from its first day to the twenty-second, was entirely consecrated to legitimate ceremonies; and after these were duly celebrated, he returned with the leaders and the people to arrange the residents of the built city. Here, the devotion and concord of the people are to be noted, who, as if one man, that is, with one and the same faith and love, gathered at the temple of the Lord; and they asked their priest to bring the book and repeat the commands of the law they should follow, so that with the city built, the structure of work pleasing to God might also rise, lest, as before, due to the negligence of religion, the ruin of the city should follow. And it was well that in the sixth month the city was built, and in the seventh, the people were gathered into it to listen to the law; indeed, the sixth day is for working in the law, the seventh is for resting. And this is our most beloved and acceptable rest to the Lord after our good work, that abstaining from servile work, that is, sin, we may more diligently give attention to hearing and fulfilling His commands. Hence, at the beginning of the same seventh month, the solemnity of the trumpets was appointed, by the sound of which the people, amidst prayers and sacrifices, might be more fervently awakened to the memory of the divine law. And now too, by spiritual understanding, after the holy city is built, the divine reading must follow, and the trumpets sound more frequently; for indeed, it is necessary that the people initiated in the heavenly sacraments, also from time to time, be more diligently instructed by sacred speeches on how they ought to live. But when it is said the people are gathered at the square before the Water Gate; I think the Water Gate refers to the court of the priests, by which the temple was surrounded on every side by a quadrangle, most especially on the eastern side of the temple, where the bronze sea was for washing the hands and feet of those entering the temple, and where the ten bronze lavers for washing sacrifices were; where also the altar of…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Ezra — Help. (1.) A priest among those that returned to Jerusalem under Zerubabel (Neh. 12:1). (2.) The “scribe” who led the second body of exiles that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem B.C. 459, and…
Synagogue — (Gr. sunagoge, i.e., “an assembly”), found only once in the Authorized Version of Ps. 74:8, where the margin of Revised Version has “places of assembly,” which is probably correct; for while the…
Commandments · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Law Of Moses, The · Publicly read: By Ezra — Publicly read: By Ezra
Scribes · Acted as: Religious teachers — Acted as: Religious teachers
Synagogue · The Scriptures were read and expoun — The Scriptures were read and expoun
Synagogues · Revival of, after the captivity — Revival of, after the captivity
Trumpets · .Celebrated after the — .Celebrated after the
Word Of God · To be read publicly — To be read publicly
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Neh 8:1-2. The public reading of the law. - Neh 8:1-3. The introduction to this narrative (Neh 7:73b-8:1a) is identical with Ezr 3:1. The same matter, the assembling of the people on the approach of the seventh month, is described in the same words. But the object of this assembling of the people was a different one from that mentioned in Ezr 3:1-13. Then they met to restore the altar of burnt-offering and the sacrificial worship; now, on the contrary, for the due solemnization of the seventh month, the festal month of the year. For this purpose the people came from the cities and villages of Judah to Jerusalem, and assembled "in the open space before the water-gate," i.e., to the south-east…
on October 8: The people came together on this day to celebrate the Festival of Trumpets (Lev 23:24-25), which marked the beginning of a new year in the postexilic calendar.
Rashi on Nehemiah 8:2
on the first day of the seventh month That is the day of Rosh Hashanah.
