Nehemiah had it in his heart to do a genealogy, and have everything orderly. God moved him. It was an instruction from the Lord that moved him to pay attention to this, to update Ezra’s list, to make it the basis of everything that would be done. Now, of course, Nehemiah was in that old dispensation, and he was an appointed person to do God's will. We cannot attach the same authority to ideas that come into our mind. We can't say as confidently as he did: ‘God told me to do this; God told me to do that.’ Sometimes God does tell you to do something. The Holy Spirit does prompt you to do something for someone or carry out some duty or do something for the Lord. But the only way you can know whether that is the right thing for you to do, is to evaluate your good idea Scripturally. Is it something you should be doing? Your answer maybe, ‘Yes. Of course, I should be helping this person I am moved to help, or witnessing to that person I've been moved to witness to. That is my duty, my biblical duty, as a child of God.’ If we have a thought, we must evaluate it. Many people have thoughts, which they don't evaluate as a Christian people, and so they think God is guiding them to do things which he is not guiding them to do. Yes, God sometimes gives us good ideas, and stimulates our thought, and moves in our heart to do this or that for him, but we have to evaluate. Well Nehemiah is able much more certainly to know this is of God; he must to work along these lines, and according to this pattern.
There is trouble with the list and it is quite often attacked by Bible critics. The list here in chapter 7 comes from the time of Ezra. ‘I found a register’, he says, a counting of the people; here it is, and he quotes it. It is an old list which Nehemiah has found which was compiled by Ezra. It is a list, a version of which also appears in the book of Ezra, beginning at the end of chapter 1 and going through chapter 2, so you might think it ought to be the same. Well in general terms, it is the same, although a lot of the names are spelt differently from the list published in Ezra, and there are some different names. But there are also other differences. The biggest problem is to do with the numbers of the families that returned: the numbers are about twenty percent different from the earlier list in Ezra; they wave about. They are broadly the same, but there is a twenty percent difference in the numbers as given. And of course, Bible critics make hay with this. This just shows, they say, the enormous amount of scribal error in copies. These are versions of a list that are all less than 13 years old, and yet they vary so very much. Well there are a variety of explanations for that, which are plausible and possible. It is possible that the list published in Ezra – which is described as a list of people who departed from Babylon – may have been a list that Ezra made before the people left: these are the ones who volunteered, all the people who were meant to depart, following the great rendezvous. Whereas another edition of the list, possibly the one found by Nehemiah thirteen years later and included in this book, may be the list of the people who arrived, the list of people who, after a few months, when it was all revised possibly, were there. You could imagine that easily within twenty percent of number differences you could account for that. If a small number of people never actually turned up for the journey; they didn't catch the bus, as it were, from Babylon back to Jerusalem. Or possibly a small number of people went back to Babylon quite quickly; they had sickness or disillusionment, and they returned without completing the journey. Maybe others at the last minute in Babylon had a change of heart and tagged on with their families. So you could well imagine that variation in the numbers within 20 or so percent could be accounted for in that way – the lists being compiled by the meticulous Ezra at different times.
But there's another problem: all the numbers in the list do not add up to the total which is given. They are twelve and a half thousand people short of the total, so all the numbers that are given in the list fall short of the total at the end of the list, and that has mystified people. It is the same with Ezra’s list. It is similarly ten to twelve thousand numerically short of the total which he gives. The most likely explanation is that these lists only give numbers for the returnees who were of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Israel in the north had gone into exile generations previously. The northern kingdom was no more. It was Judah the southern kingdom which had been taken by Nebuchadnezzar into Babylonian captivity, and so it's only Judah and the little tribe of Benjamin (which is usually counted be Judah), who are included in the detailed numbers. Maybe the twelve and a half thousand shortfall is accounted for by Israelites from the ten northern tribes who also volunteered to come back to the holy land, with the main party. And they are there in the total, but they are not referred to in the individual references to numbers of family members who returned. There are some perfectly reasonable explanations as to why the numbers do not add up.