16

I was reading Nehemiah 12:12-13:9.

“What day was it, exactly?” I said. I turned to Nehemiah, waiting for an answer.

He waited.

“You led a huge celebration of the completion of the wall. The celebration finishes.

“We read, ‘at that time men were appointed to be in charge of the storerooms.’^[1]And then we read about the whole history of priests and Levites, singers and gatekeepers.

“And then we read, ‘On that day the Book of Moses was read aloud.’^[2] And then we read about the Ammonites and the Moabites.

“And then we read ‘Before this, Eliashib the priest had been put in charge of the storerooms.’^[3] And we read about Tobiah living in the temple.

“And then we read ‘But while all this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem.’^[4]

“And then we read about what you did with Tobiah when you got back and about the Levites not getting the offerings and going back to their towns. So, pick any of those things. What day was it, exactly?”

He took a sip of his coffee. He looked out the window. The snow was mostly gone. The squirrels were able to eat acorns. For several weeks, they had been limited to a diet of birdseed tossed from the birdfeeders by active juncos.

“Why do you want to know?” he said.

I was not expecting that question.

I paused. Then I said, “Because I want to tell the story, your story. A storyteller needs to know the narrative structure, to have a flow of the story. It makes no sense right now. ‘At that time’, ‘the same day’, ‘before that’, ‘but I wasn’t there’. That’s crazy talk. That’s why people have questions about the Bible. ‘Why should I believe this? It’s so confusing. It’s contradictory.’”

“But why do you want to know?” he asked again. “Are you doubting?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all. But I like to be able to explain.”

He leaned forward. “Think about it this way. What if you could see the lines in the original text that we’ve talked about before, the Post-It notes and hand-scrawled notes? What if you looked at the lines that are there?”

“What lines?”

“Okay. There’s the story about the dedication of the walls. It ends with a summary about the amount of noise. Then there’s another section, this time talking very clearly about the care of the offerings and the temple workers. Then there’s another section, about reading the book of Moses.”

I slapped my head.

“What is it?”

“You just have to actually stop and read the text, don’t you?”

“What?”

“I finally get it, at least part of my confusion. Chapter 13 is backwards.”

“What?”

“I know that you were just writing sentences, not chapters. But at the beginning of what we call chapter 13 we read, ‘On that day.’ And I asked, ‘What day?’ Because I thought that ‘on that day’ was talking about the day the dedication happened. But now that I’m actually stopping and reading this, here’s what I think:

“This is written like I write sometimes, or better, like I talk. The first few sentences, the sentences about reading the book of Moses and talking about the Moabites, if we were to put those words on a timeline, they come after you kicked Tobiah out.”

Nehemiah smiled at my enthusiasm. “I know what you mean, but I think you better explain for the readers at home.”

“Okay. Let me try telling the story.

“In the days following the dedication of the walls, ‘at that time,’ people are put in charge of the storerooms in the temple.  Facility managers, or administrators, or money guards, or all three. One of them is a priest named Eliashib. We don’t know any other names.

“These people had great responsibility. They took offerings people brought and put them in storerooms. Then they distributed them regularly to the priests and Levites.

“Before there was a temple, in the tabernacle days, the Levites carried the tent poles and the awnings and the furniture as the people moved around the wilderness. After things settled down, David appointed some of them to be singers and appointed Asaph to lead the choir and write music. It looked a lot like a church staff today.”

He smiled at me. “Spoken like a true executive pastor,” he said.

“Eventually, you leave for Susa. It’s been twelve years since you came. You have rebuilt the wall. You’ve been around for a few cycles of the routine. You need to check in with the king.

“You leave someone in charge as governor, perhaps your brother, and you are gone. You neglect to tell us how long. But during that time Eliashib is approached by Tobiah. He was your nemesis from Chapter 2. Eliashib and Tobiah are related somehow. And somehow, Tobiah ends up with a room, an apartment, on the temple campus. Right so far?”

Nehemiah just looked at me.

“When you return, you are stunned, then furious. You toss Tobiah’s stuff out of the temple. You clean the room. and you go looking for the storage containers and the offerings. You find some, but you realize that there are fewer Levites around than there should be.

“What you do about that situation will be another story. But that ‘same day’, when people are wondering what the noise is, you have someone read the book of Moses. the part that talks about what the Moabites and Ammonites did to Israel. The words that are written at the beginning of chapter 13, but happen after verse 9.”

Nehemiah smiled. “But why do you want to know?”

I made a list for him:

• “Because it’s a powerful story.
• People are appointed as leaders, but they aren’t always perfect. They come with baggage. That baggage, left unaddressed, can wreck them.
• Leaders doing dumb stuff with God’s stuff isn’t new. And it doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, it means that we have to clean house.
• Unless we keep renewing our commitments and remembering what God says, we can drift.
• Leaders like you are human. You had to leave. You got to come back and follow up.
• Just because I don’t understand the story doesn’t mean I’m dumb or that it’s wrong. Sometimes the text takes time.”

I looked out the window. “Now, tell me about Tobiah,” I said.

When I turned around, he was gone.