In his epistle to the Diaspora, the twelve tribes of Israel scattered throughout the nations, James wrote a hypothetical argument concerning the Law. He said: “Whoever shall keep the whole Law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10), because “He who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ But, if you do not commit adultery, yet, if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the Law” (James 2:11). This is a hypothetical argument, offered to make a point that any transgression is breaking the Mosaic Covenant. Yet, even Joshua, who brought Israel into the Promised Land in the beginning, knew men were unable to serve the Lord. In other words, men are naturally disobedient (Joshua 24:19). Instead, one was to incline his heart toward the Lord (Joshua 24:23).
In fact, the Lord even went to the extreme to promise, if his people would keep even one precept of the Law, namely, the Sabbath, he would save them from destruction (Jeremiah 17:21-22, 24-26)! Nevertheless, they were disobedient even to that one command (Jeremiah 17:23), because they simply didn’t want anyone to instruct them to do good. In other words, they pushed knowledge of the Lord away, and did as they pleased (cp. Romans 1:28).
Similarly, “In those days…” vis-à-vis the days immediately following Nehemiah’s return to Jerusalem, during the days, when he set up the gates in Jerusalem’s wall (Nehemiah 7:1), in the same days when he cast Tobiah’s goods out of the chamber of the Temple, which was given him by Eliashib, the high priest (Nehemiah 13:7-8), “In those days… (Nehemiah 13:15) Nehemiah witnessed the Jews breaking the Sabbath by doing business on that day, and carrying burdens. Even heathen men from Tyre had market places in Jerusalem, where they bought and sold items of interest to the Jews on the Sabbath day (Nehemiah 13:15-16).
Therefore, Nehemiah contended with the nobility in the city, vis-à-vis the wealthy businessmen who conducted their financial affairs on the Sabbath day. Nehemiah confronted them, reminding them of the evil thing their fathers had done (cp. Jeremiah 17:23), which thing brought down judgment upon the city and caused the Lord to destroy both Jerusalem and the Temple (Nehemiah 13:17-18; cp. Jeremiah 17:28). Greed is the mother of all kinds of evil.[1]
So, as the new governor of the province of Judah, Nehemiah ordered that the gates of Jerusalem be closed, when the shadows of the afternoon sun began to pass over the gates of the city just prior to the commencement of the Sabbath, and they were not to be reopened until the Sabbath was passed. Moreover, Nehemiah placed some of his servants at the gates of the city to enforce his command that no burden would be borne into or out of the city on the Sabbath day (Nehemiah 13:19; cp. 7:1-3).
Immediately afterward, when merchants thought to sell their goods just outside the city wall, Nehemiah once again confronted the nobility, saying if they continued in their flagrant disobedience of the Law, he would lay hands upon them and punish them (Nehemiah 13:20-21). Thus, Nehemiah stopped the Jews from profaning the Sabbath in and about Jerusalem, when they understood that the Law of Moses would be enforced.
Finally, Nehemiah commanded the Levites, the porters, to cleanse themselves and take charge of the gates and enforce the Sabbath law. Thus, Nehemiah prayed, asking the Lord to remember the good he had done and have mercy upon him for any mistakes or errors in judgment he had made during his earlier tenure as governor of the Jews,[2] which may have brought on this blatant disobedience of the Sabbath law (Nehemiah 13:22).
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[1] See my previous study: The Revival of Tithing
[2] Keep in mind that my understanding at this point is that Nehemiah wasn’t the expert in the Law of Moses that Ezra was, and Nehemiah seems to have wondered about the value of his work for the Lord, when it wasn’t the Law of Moses that he enforced during his first tenure at Jerusalem, but he used his own good example and shame against the nobility to get them to do good for the poor.
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