Nehemiah 8:5 Commentary and Bible Study

This is very deliberate, this description. The Hebrew says ‘in the eyes of all the people’. ‘In the sight of’ is a perfectly good translation, but the original seems to make it very plain that Ezra did everything to be seen. You can imagine him on this very lofty platform or pulpit, and he opens the book, only it isn’t a book of course; in those times it was a scroll. Slowly and methodically he lifts the first of a number of scrolls up high for all to see, and opens it. You might say it's theatre. Well, it is not intended as that. It is intended so that everybody could see the authority, the scroll that is being handled so reverently and deliberately which is going to be read from. This is the authority of God. This is where our elevated pulpit comes from in churches. It is only following the pattern here in the book of Nehemiah. When he opened it, all the people stood up, a vast crowd of them, thousands upon thousands of them. They stood instinctively, because that is what they were in the habit of doing for worship. But they had never assembled like this, not for years.