Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 7-8.

Once the walls had been restored, Nehemiah realized that relatively few people lived in Jerusalem.  In order to decide how to remedy this, Nehemiah had the people assemble in Jerusalem to register them according to their genealogies.  Actually, it seems to me that he got the idea of doing so after he discovered the genealogical records of the first group to return from Exile.  When the people assembled they had Ezra read and explain the Law of Moses to them (the wording of this passage allows one to think that the assembly for reading the Law was a different assembly than the one Nehemiah called to register people by their genealogy, but I think that is an artifact of translation).  As the people heard the Law being read, they became grief stricken.  The passage does not tell us why this happened, but I suspect their reaction was similar to that of King Josiah when he heard the Book of the Law read: they realized how badly they had fallen short of keeping God’s commands.  Nehemiah, Ezra, and the rest of those who had been familiar with the Law before this encouraged the people not to feel grief, this assembly was one to celebrate God’s goodness.  When we truly understand how we have failed to live according to God’s desire for us we will feel grief.  There are times when we should put aside such grief and celebrate God’s goodness.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.