Nehemiah 11:1 Commentary and Bible Study

The walls of Jerusalem have been built (Nehemiah 7:1), the doors hung in the gates of the city (Nehemiah 7:3), and the walls of the city are soon to be dedicated (Nehemiah 12:27), but the question is who is going to live in the city. We have been told that ‘the city was large and great: but the people were few therein, and the houses were not builded’ (Nehemiah 7:4).Those who had returned from Babylon were mainly of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, since these were the two tribes that were allocated territory in the area of Jerusalem. But there were reasons why the people would prefer to live outside the city. They could return to their ancestral territory, build their own homes, and farm their own land, and focus on their own needs. They would also avoid the hostility that was being directed against Jerusalem by their enemies. The people of Samaria wanted it. All kinds of attacks had been made on it during the building of the wall. It was a dangerous place to be; it was a disadvantageous place to be. For an agrarian people it was much, much better to have a homestead and a farmstead out in the open countryside under beautiful hills, where the olives and the crops and the vines grew, than to be cooped up in a city. But they had covenanted together, and there remained much work to be done. Jerusalem must be populated and defended from those who still wished to frustrate the work and repossess the lands for themselves. But most importantly Jerusalem was the city where the Lord had caused the temple to be located and it was the centre of worship of the living God and of Israel’s testimony to the LORD. The worship required the dedicated service of the priests, the Levites, and the porters. They had expressed their willingness to separate from the pagan people round about and to put the Lord first in the covenant they had signed, and here was the first practical test of their sincerity. The rulers of the people led the way. Jerusalem was the administrative capital of Judah, and they set an example for the rest of the people. Some interpret the first two verses to mean that there were some who volunteered, but insufficient to populate the city and therefore others were chosen by lot. But the fact that the lot is mentioned before the volunteers are blessed for their willing spirit, suggests that there were more volunteers than were needed, and the lot was used to reduce their number to give a proportion to nine in the rural areas to one in Jerusalem. That was wonderful! The covenant meant that the attitude of even godly people was changed, and now they said, ‘Yes, but many of us’ – one in ten, at least, was the figure – ‘have got to live in the holy city, and revitalise it.’ That is the heart of our witness for God, and our honouring him.’ And where that dedication had been absent, by the time they understand the language of covenant, they've got ample volunteers.