John Bytheway:               00:01                   Welcome to part two of Ezra and Nehemiah with Dr. Christina Olson.

Dr. Christina Olson:         00:06                   Then chapter seven, we finally get to Ezra. The whole name of this book we don’t even get to Ezra till chapter seven. This is another return group. We’re actually at another group again coming up to Jerusalem. Zerubbabel and Jeshua were over in 521. Now we’re to the time of Ezra, probably around 458. There’s some debate on that again, historically-wise. Some people put Ezra actually later after Nehemiah. That’s an interesting thing to think about. But for most traditions, we think, we see, we put Ezra at 458. So another return, he is returning with the king’s backing behind him. He talks about Ezra being this scribe and this priest. He’s also connected to, if you look even at the genealogy, again, genealogy is important. It connects him to all the way back to Aaron, the first high priest of the tabernacle. So he’s connected to Aaron, he has that authority.

                                           01:02                   He’s also connected to the scribes of Jerusalem, to the pre-exilic time. So he’s got that authority in the Judaic community, this idea he is a priest, he is a scribe. In the KJV, it says a ready scribe, which you discussed at the beginning. Ready also means more like skilled or expert. And if we talk about scribes in the ancient Near East, it’s not at all what we picture a scribe nowadays. They’re not just writing. These are very involved people within administration, within the elite. They’re the few people who can write. They’re important figures within these systems. Even the fact that we’re talking about Ezra having this release from the king to go to Jerusalem, give the law, but also check on everybody. And this is the same instruction that Nehemiah’s going to get to. So he comes to teach the Torah. He again brings more supplies to the temple.

                                           01:57                   He’s there to teach the people of Jerusalem. And then in later chapters, we’ll get the words that he teaches, which is this law of Moses. So he is this bringer of the law back to the community. So we have our temple. Now we’re getting our law. This is the second aspect of this return.

Hank Smith:                      02:14                   Like a Moses 2.0.

Dr. Christina Olson:         02:16                   Bringer of the law. Yeah. We’ll see Ezra later in the book of Nehemiah. Again, these stories being brought together which shows us how he does really give that law.

Hank Smith:                      02:26                   So the rest of the book is Ezra teaching.

Dr. Christina Olson:         02:29                   And dealing with some issues too. This goes a little bit back to the issues of imperfect community building. There’s issues of intermarriage, which is actually not an issue in the law of Moses, but it becomes an issue here. They force people to be divorced from people who are not part of that community. So there’s some sorrow there as that part of that building the community, that imperfect part of deciding who we are.

John Bytheway:               02:53                   In verse seven, there went up some of the children of Israel and of the priests and the Levites and the singers and the porters and the Nethinims. Maybe Nethinim, because -IM is plural in Hebrew. What are Nethinims?

Dr. Christina Olson:         03:08                   These are all personnel of the temple. So it’s setting up the people that come into work at the temple. So we have priests. The singers are probably like musicians or people who help with the chanting. And then we have these porters. Other times they’re called gatekeepers. They’re probably more of the administrative part of the temple. And then we have these Nethinims that comes from the root natan, which means to give. So the givers of the temple really refers to more like the servants of the people, the people who are serving in the temple, which is kind of a cool base, right? Think about the people giving… They’re temple workers, but they’re giving. The ones that are giving to the temple, giving of themselves to do that.

Hank Smith:                      03:47                   This is great. I love understanding this. Ezra, he’s a good guy, but you said he’s doing some hard things.

Dr. Christina Olson:         03:53                   Yeah. I mean, probably most of these leaders, right? They’re good guys. They’re important. They’re good religious leaders. But doing hard things. Maybe the right choices, maybe not. We can’t really judge that. It’s not our place to judge the good or bad or what God specifically commanded him to do or not. We just know that there are good and bad that are happening together.

Hank Smith:                      04:15                   Could I summarize it that way? Would that be okay, that 7 through 10 are Ezra’s teachings and community building and solving issues, stuff like that?

Dr. Christina Olson:         04:23                   Yeah, in reforms.

Hank Smith:                      04:26                   I know you’re excited about the book of Nehemiah. What do we do with this book?

Dr. Christina Olson:         04:29                   We’re going to move on to the story because they were connected. This is just the next stage in rebuilding. We’ve got the temple. We’ve got the law. Now we need to build the city and its walls. The physical boundary of our community. This is what Nehemiah does for us. He builds our walls. I do love Nehemiah. Wrote some of my dissertation on some aspects of that because of what he does to it. I’ll get into that. Starts out with Nehemiah. He is the cupbearer to the king, this Mashkeh Lamelech, which is a pretty important position. At any age we have cupbearers throughout history. The person that’s close to the king that makes sure he doesn’t die. He’s a very, very trusted individual. And in the beginning of chapter one, it talks about some of his family members, a brother, or maybe someone in his community comes and gives him word about Jerusalem.

                                           05:20                   We’re now probably about 445 BC. We don’t completely know history. It says during the time of Artaxerxes, there’s a couple different Artaxerxes. We don’t know exactly, but most people put it with Artaxerxes the first who reigned from about 465 to 423. So we put Nehemiah probably around 445 coming to Jerusalem. And his brethren come and they say, this land is in ruins. Jerusalem is in ruins. The people are suffering. Nehemiah becomes very sorrowful. He’s mourning because of the sadness that, of the people, which at the moment is kind of a little weird because you just read this really cool part about a temple being constructed and people being happy. And now we’re sad again. Makes you pause, especially if you’re hearing it, right? You’re like, all right, we’re happy. We’re good. We’re setting community. Oh, wait, we’re in ruins again. But it makes you pause. You’re thinking, oh, it’s not done yet. We actually aren’t complete. We’ve got the temple, we’ve got the laws. This job isn’t done. This restoration’s not complete. So we’re still kind of sad because we haven’t got everything ready yet.

Hank Smith:                      06:21                   That’s real life. It’s going well, but it’s not sometimes. So…

Dr. Christina Olson:         06:25                   Or it can be both again, right? The Persian period, Jerusalem is still in ruins. Economy is good, but not near like what it was before with some of the past kings. So he’s sad. He comes to the king. The king is, notices his countenance, he says. He sees that he’s sorrowful and asks him what’s wrong. In chapter two, we get to that one. These are the verses that I think are really significant and what I talk about a lot in my work. In verse three, the king asks, why are you sorrowful? Are you sick? And he says, no, I’m not sick. I’m just really sad. Why should not my countenance be sad? I’m going to give you the King James version and then give you my own translation. The city, the place of my father’s sepulchres lie waste and the gates are consumed with fire. They have been destroyed.

                                           07:12                   Whether we’re talking about the historical memory of them being destroyed in fires from the Babylonians, or if there’s recent fires, we don’t really know that one, but we get this idea of this really severe destruction. And then the king asks him, so what’s your request? And he says, if it pleases the king, if your servant has found favor in thy sight, send me to Judah. Send me to the city of those tombs of my fathers so I can rebuild it. This is where I pause a lot to think about this context of what he’s calling. So he doesn’t actually name the city Jerusalem here. In this whole conversation, he doesn’t say, oh, Jerusalem’s destroyed. I got to go fix it. He just refers to the house of the tombs of my fathers. I mentioned about tombs and them being important for inheritance and the fact that people will come in and take bones out of tombs to desecrate and lose that inheritance.

                                           08:02                   But also tombs being this very permanent aspect of a family, of a house, this household, this kindred of families and lineages is so important having that tomb. That’s your claim to your land, your claim to inheritance. That’s why we keep talking about Abraham and the Cave of Machpelah. You see that throughout the stories into the books of Kings and Chronicles. We talk about the burials of the kings in the city of David and Kings and Chronicles. It’s very important to note where burial is and to know and to remember and to maintain your tombs. There’s these traditions in the ancient world and actually continuing of tombs being these places of memory. We continue to come back to our tombs. We come back to where we have buried our people, both to retain that memory of them, also that connection to them.

                                           08:52                   It was like so much more in ancient times. We talked about the fact that Lehi and his family left. They left their home, but they left the tombs of their fathers also. No one was left to care for their family tomb, to care for their families. One really cool thing that in my research, is I found, I look at the tombs around Jerusalem, the destroyed ruins and the settlements. The sediment’s a lot smaller. So there’s not as many people living there. Some of the elite were gone. But if you look at these tombs that were built, so they’re carved into rock, they were built during the Iron Age, during the time of the kings. In the tradition of barrow, you’d go in this tomb, like a room with some benches around it. You’d lay out the dead, observe the dead and have a ritual of mourning for about a week.

                                           09:36                   Then you’d leave the body there. Probably you’d return over the course of a year. But then after a year when the body’s disintegrated and the bones are left, you gather up the bones and you put them into a hole or some type of collecting space. So you’re gathering all the bones of your fathers, the people that you are inheritors from. They also have remains and goods and pottery. And there’s a site called Ketef Hinnom or these Mamilla tombs that are near the city of Jerusalem. They notice there’s continuity in some of the material. Even though there’s the destruction of the Babylonians, you still see material from the Persian period in these tombs. There’s this indication that these tombs were continued to be used to be remembered. They weren’t robbed out like a lot of tombs are. In the ancient world, tombs are like free game for robbers.

                                           10:25                   But someone had memory of the tombs as well as ability to protect the tombs to make sure they weren’t robbed out because plenty of others were around, especially around Jerusalem. But there’s a few times that weren’t, that weren’t robbed out and they continue to have goods in them from the Persian period. One of the things I argue is these people who are living Jerusalem, living in ruins, it’s been destroyed. They’re farther away from these tombs because the city’s a lot smaller. They’re still going to these tombs. They’re still remembering their dead because this claim to their dead is really important to this claim to both their inheritance and their claim to the city as well as those traditions that they’re passing on in this worship of Yahweh. When Nehemiah comes here and says to the king, this is the city or this household of the graves of my fathers.

                                           11:11                   He is staking that claim to the king of Persia who also, for them, this idea of tombs, they have these grand house-like tombs that they have traditions of in Persia too so the king would know this. He’d directly associate this idea of these tombs of these kings being important in claims to land. So he’s, instead of just saying Jerusalem, he’s saying, this is my inherited land that is in ruins and destroyed. This is what the legacy, the traditions of my family rests on. My identity is over here in ruins. That sets the stage for the whole reason I’m going back to this city is because this is where my ancestors are. They have that claim to the land and I need to rebuild that and retain that memory.

Hank Smith:                      11:52                   Yeah. That’s interesting when we talk about redeeming the dead. Might not just be about temple work, but about rebuilding the legacy they left and connecting to them.

Dr. Christina Olson:         12:06                   Yeah. But also just anchor points and tradition. During the time when I was writing my dissertation and getting into this material, actually towards the end, my dad passed away. It was very real to me, this idea of what do we do with our dead? How do we bury them? What do we think about what’s important to us? Why do we care about burying our dead? What are we remembering about them? And it really is a very intentional, a very personal aspect of who you are and your identity. And you carry those traditions and those stories on. And you have that here in the text, this idea, this is our anchor point. This is my tradition of remembering my past.

Hank Smith:                      12:46                   Wow. You were writing a dissertation. You had two little boys and your dad passes away.

Dr. Christina Olson:         12:54                   It was a rough time. Going back to these times when things aren’t always fun, but in having those anchor points, that really drove home to me. There are certain traditions that I can hang onto even if other things are rough or struggling when it comes to especially the gospel or things I learned right from my parents, from my dad that I can hold onto, that make me part of this community even if I don’t always feel like it. If I don’t feel like I’m being the perfect community member, I’m not the perfect churchgoer right now. I’m not doing all these things right. But sometimes it does go back to my dad knew this was true, right? He taught me these traditions. My parents taught me how to do this. It’s important for me to continue it to my own son. Sometimes maybe I go to church some days because I just need to take my son to church. He needs to go to church even if I’m not feeling like going to church. We build upon those traditions and those anchor points. I think that’s one of the things that Nehemiah is doing, is building on the anchor.

Hank Smith:                      13:51                   Christina, is Nehemiah giving up a pretty nice position to go back and do a bunch of work?

Dr. Christina Olson:         13:59                   Yeah. Yeah, he’s probably living in the palace, having some life of luxury there with servants and having the ear of the king. And he doesn’t completely forego that. He builds the temple. At one point, he actually does go back to Persia, but then he’ll return again 12 years later. But yeah, it’s not a simple thing to just be like, hey, I’ll just go up. I’m going to go to Jerusalem for a bit. It’s a big step, big thing to do.

John Bytheway:               14:24                   If you are in Persia, present day what? Iraq? How long does it take you to get to Jerusalem?

Dr. Christina Olson:         14:33                   Going back to Ezra, part of chapter seven actually really does get into not actually the trip, but the preparation for the trip. I mean, it says it takes five months to get there. You definitely cross a desert.

John Bytheway:               14:44                   Wow, that seems dangerous too because those vessels were a lot of gold and silver and precious things in your, in the open traveling with them. We had our stake conference recently and President Swinton, our stake president, talked about going back to help rebuild the Nauvoo Temple. How he drove in air-conditioned comfort 19 hours from Salt Lake City back to Nauvoo and helped pour concrete for that. And how he pondered how much longer a walk it was for the pioneers to go the other direction from Nauvoo to Salt Lake City. But how important it was to build a temple. The travel time and effort is magnified so much when we think about what these people did. And like you said, Hank, Nehemiah has got a high position and he’s like, yeah, I’ll go. I mean, that’s impressive.

Hank Smith:                      15:35                   He drinks yummy stuff for a living. I would love that job.

Dr. Christina Olson:         15:38                   He might die, but…

John Bytheway:               15:40                   Where’s my cup bearer and the Dr. Pepper? Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      15:44                   Maybe it might be a bit of a stretch, but I might be able to say, what am I willing to do to go to the temple to help my ancestors? Nehemiah is sacrificing a lot to go to the temple and rebuild. How much am I willing to sacrifice to go to the temple and return to my ancestors there?

John Bytheway:               16:05                   If only we had some temples close by in Utah where we live, you know, if only there were maybe one or two options or 10 or 12.

Hank Smith:                      16:14                   Yeah.

Dr. Christina Olson:         16:16                   Babylon, like the capital of Babylon was part of modern day Iraq and then Persia is a little more south and modern day Iran.

Hank Smith:                      16:24                   I heard somewhere once that there are Jews in Iran who say they’ve been there since the exile.

Dr. Christina Olson:         16:31                   Yeah. Well, actually a lot of Arab countries, but especially Iraq and Iran, do have Jews living there basically since the time of exile up until like the 1940s when there were issues and they left. There’s a long history of Judaism in those other countries as much as we like think about Israel being right, being the place of Judaism. We have a whole Talmud from Babylon, right? This whole manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. They were writing their scripture over there too.

John Bytheway:               16:58                   Of all the sons of Israel, of Jacob, it seems like the Jews are the ones, Judah, who have always remembered their identity and the rest of us have to be reminded from a patriarchal blessing.

Hank Smith:                      17:15                   When I read about Nehemiah, I’m like, wow, good guy so far. Should I be thinking that, Christina?

Dr. Christina Olson:         17:21                   For the most part, yes.

Hank Smith:                      17:23                   Yeah, he cares about his homeland.

Dr. Christina Olson:         17:25                   Yeah. He does care about his land. And we see that throughout there. The cool thing about Nehemiah is throughout this story, whenever there’s kind of time of conflict and chaos, we get a prayer from Nehemiah. He’s kind of like our prayer guy. Like in the end of chapter one, this is that sorrow of Jerusalem and this issue there. He ends it with a prayer to God even after he’s spoken. So he’s first he’s spoken to the king, now he’s speaking to God. So you’ll see like bits of times he will always respond to conflict with a prayer towards God.

Hank Smith:                      18:00                   Interesting. Says that he tells them the things of God and they laugh at him. He doesn’t fall into it. He’s like, no, I’m going to keep bearing my testimony.

Dr. Christina Olson:         18:10                   Definitely a very strong figure.

Hank Smith:                      18:13                   I might walk through the end of chapter two with my teenage sons. Just this little exchange. I told them of the hand of God which was upon me. They laughed and scorned and despised me. Then I answered them and said, the God of heaven, he will prosper us. I like that little back and forth. I talked about God, they laughed at me, so I continued to talk about God.

Dr. Christina Olson:         18:38                   Yeah. And that’s kind of like part and parcel of how Nehemiah reacts and responds to these adversaries. So we finally get the names of the adversaries similar to the ones they were talking about in Ezra Nehemiah. We have Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem. These are regional leaders. Then they probably do have pretty good claim to the land. And some of the other chapters later, they’re related to the high priests of the temple. One of their sons is married to the daughter of the high priest. They’re not really that much outside the community. They are very much part of it. They’re worshiping Yahweh. They’re related to members of the priests of the temple. But we get this opposition between, hey, Nehemiah’s come. He’s building the wall. A little bit we get this parallel with Ezra. They want to help. Nehemiah says, no, you’re not part of our people. You can’t help. So they get mad.

                                           19:32                   We get some more letters to the kings. But also we get some of this drama. Right when he comes, he has opposition right away. These leaders meet him. They’re like, you’re kind of upsetting the balance of our system. We don’t like you. So it says at nighttime, he has to secretly go out and go around the city to check the city in secret. And then he’ll tell everybody what he’s here to do. We get this more direct confrontation. These leaders are saying, we don’t like you. You shouldn’t be here. And he responds with, I should be here. This goes back to, again, that claim to the land. My ancestors are here. The tombs of my fathers are here. You don’t have claim to this land. He’s saying, you don’t have the tombs of your fathers here. This is not where you are from. And he’s really going back to that message saying, I’m clarifying our boundaries here.

                                           20:17                   You don’t have your ancestors buried here. I do, so it’s our land and it’s our God who is the God of heaven. And this is actually a really interesting phrase, this God of heaven term. We start to see it in Ezra as well as into Nehemiah. This is a term that’s not very common. You see only in post-exilic texts like Daniel, Job, Psalms, you get it twice in Genesis, but it’s not really a common word for God beforehand. You also don’t see in Ezra Nehemiah any other description of any other gods. Whereas in the past stories, you’re going against the priests of other gods. You’re acknowledging a priest of Baal. That’s a pretty common antagonist in the earlier stories of the kings. But in Ezra Nehemiah, you have no mention of any other gods. You’re really getting to see these distinct signs of our God is the one God, he is universal.

                                           21:10                   He is in the heavens. He is overall. He’s directing. He’s that puppermaster with these other foreign kings, with Cyrus, with other leaders. God is the one king, he is overall. They’re starting to not even acknowledge this idea that other people have other gods because God is our supreme God. We’re building a temple and he dwells there, but his presence can be felt or seen anywhere else. And this goes back to that development of what becomes Judaism, this fact that we can worship without our temple. We can have access to God even if we’re not at his temple as well. Temple’s important, but you don’t absolutely have to have that temple to worship God. That goes back to that Ezra, what he did with setting the boundaries. Was it right? Was it not? We don’t know. They seem to be wanting to be worshiping God too of Yahweh.

                                           21:59                   It’s their same God, but they’re not part of that community. And later on, they build a temple at Samaria, which again, when we’re reading it, because we’re reading it from the view of this, the Hebrew Bible from the Old Testament, we’re like, oh, bad, there’s a temple over there. Or you could also look at it as, hey, these people are also worshiping God. They want a place to worship. There’s some political struggles in there too going on as who has control over this house of God?

Hank Smith:                      22:24                   Christina, in your mind, if they just allow other people to come and worship with, they save themselves a bunch of problems. But at the same time, in their problems, they’re trying to be faithful in the problems they created. That is my life. I’m trying to be faithful in the very problems I created.

Dr. Christina Olson:         22:44                   Right. You take your kid to school, you’re like, we’re going to go to church. We’re going to be respectful. We’re going to be righteous. And the whole time you’re not very righteous when you warn him and threaten him to be righteous at church. I think it also gets to this idea that it’s complicated. There’s not always a perfect answer to follow God’s law, to worship, or to do, you do the best you can. Know that you can unintentionally make wrong choices, but it’s just that complexity of being human, of believing God and trying to do the best you can.

Hank Smith:                      23:13                   Yeah. Was it a good idea to do that boundary maintenance? Because it sure causes them a bunch of problems. Maybe they’d be here saying, oh, you don’t realize they wanted to change things. I don’t know.

Dr. Christina Olson:         23:25                   On the other side too, maybe that was the reason they were able to retain who they are as we are Jews to retain that identity by making sure their community is smaller instead of expanding it and maybe it diffusing into other things. Maybe some of both.

Hank Smith:                      23:40                   It’s the opposite of missionary work. It’s like, no, do not come in. We want to be part of it. No. Lock the doors.

Dr. Christina Olson:         23:46                   Yeah. That makes me think of the fact that again, this is like God’s gospel, the basic doctrines are true, but different aspects of it or how we practice it change over time. It looks different between different decades, different centuries. Our church today looks very, very different from the early church with the things that we practice and do and how it looks, but we’re still based in those basic doctrines.

Hank Smith:                      24:11                   Then you could say that their adversaries, they’re not doing the right thing either, even though they weren’t allowed in. Going to attack and kill these people and stop their work, probably not the best idea either.

Dr. Christina Olson:         24:23                   We have very clear picture saying these are not the good guys. They’re plotting secret plans to come and kill Nehemiah. If we skip over chapter three is another kind of a genealogy list, which is important and that’s the people building the wall. But if we skip that for now, this establishing part. If we go back to chapter four, Sanballat and all the other enemies, right? They’re plotting to kill Nehemiah. There is a lot of conflict going on in dangerous aspects to this wall building.

Hank Smith:                      24:51                   The dangerous job building the temple.

John Bytheway:               24:54                   Look at verse nine. We made our prayer unto God, set a watch against them day and night. Verse 18, the builders, everyone had his sword girded by his side and so builded. It’s a dangerous job to build the temple.

Dr. Christina Olson:         25:09                   They’re like building with a hammer and they got a sword on the other hand.

Hank Smith:                      25:13                   The drama is definitely building. Does that take us to chapter five?

Dr. Christina Olson:         25:17                   Yes and no. They’ve been building the wall. They have these outside adversaries. Suddenly we get to chapter five where it says there’s a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brother and the Jews. Then you have this whole issue of actually some internal strife. Now they’ve got issues within their community. People are charging interest on loans. They’re already it’s a hard economic system. There’s tributes to the king. They’re paying taxes. But also now it’s internally they’re becoming in debt to one another. It says they’re taking slaves of one another. This goes very much against the law of Moses where they’re absolutely not supposed to take slaves of one another.

                                           25:58                   We moved the building part and now we’re looking at the inside of the community. So it’s kind of saying we’re actually not done with figuring out who our community is and building that community and who we are because now we’ve got to deal with this internal problems. Besides all the other outside, it’s like problems they’re dealing with. It’s a really random, like, just throw it in the story. Because yeah, we want to see what happens with the wall and all these opposition, but you’re like, nope, first we got to work on inside. First, we got to deal with this conflict. There’s Nehemiah for you. He had to deal with all those issues. Seems like a pretty good leader.

Hank Smith:                      26:28                   I think of every Bishop, Relief Society President or Stake President who’s like trying to deal with all these external problems and then my people start fighting each other and you’re like, oh okay. Internal problems now.

Dr. Christina Olson:         26:43                   This is the time when Nehemiah goes to his community and says, you got to stop. He makes them give back the interest. Kind of rights the wrongs. This is where he also says, I’m a governor of Persia, but I’m working alongside you. I’m not taking your taxes. I’m not taking your tributes. A little bit of a proof to God saying, I’m doing your work. I’m being the leader you want me to, and I’m being this example. Then we get to chapter six. We’re back to the wall building. This is where the antagonism hypes up with this idea of these leaders trying to kill Nehemiah to assassinate him through different combinations and plots of inviting him to these meetings saying, we need to come meet with you. And he says, no, I’m doing my work here. I’m not going to go, knowing they want to do him harm.

                                           27:31                   They bribe a temple official, which he also sees behind those lies saying, come be safe in the temple. Come lock yourself up in the temple so they don’t kill you. They’re trying to kill you. Nehemiah goes, I’m not even allowed to be in the temple. I’m not a priest. So he sees behind the lengths that these antagonists are going, these enemies, to kill him and to stop this work of this wall building. If we set it within the ancient near-eastern context, we think it’s walls around a ruined city. We actually don’t have a lot of archeological evidence for walls during the Persian period. If there were walls, they would’ve been not very well-built. And this is not the greatest city in the world during the time of the Persian period. But this concept of wall building is actually related to kingship in the ancient near east.

                                           28:13                   The legacy of a king is building a city, walling and that’s protecting your city, being able to withstand any threat. This concept of wall building, it could be seen and they threaten that. They say, we’re going to write the king and say you are building a wall. You’re trying to rebel. You’re trying to usurp the Persian king and become your own king. Because wall building does mean, in some sense, this idea of kingship. This is where Nehemiah goes back and says, actually, the king told me to come do this so I’m okay. They’ve built their temple. They’ve got their God, their religion. They’ve got their law to help them guide and worship. Now they’ve got their community and their nation back with these walls completed. The city and the walls around it are the completion of this return. This antagonism is really showing we have overcome all these odds to bring ourselves back to where we need to be after all this time away, after everything we’ve lost. We’ve overcome that all and we are now building and have built our city.

Hank Smith:                      29:15                   Chapter six is a great place to do a little comparison, don’t you think? With Lehonti and Amalickiah. Here, if I’m learning from Christina correctly, Nehemiah is building the walls of the city and they’re like, come on down here so we can kill you. And he’s like, no, I am doing a great work. I cannot come down. And they keep coming up. Four times. He says, nope, I’m not coming down. And he never does. John, I know you are famous for the story of Lehonti and Amalickiah. So if you wouldn’t mind sharing that, let’s compare that to this story.

John Bytheway:               29:54                   Thank you. In the Book of Mormon, as you know, there’s this guy, Amalickiah. They’re in the middle of the reign of the judges, but he wants to be a king. Captain Moroni has to chase him out and Amalickiah goes among the Lamanites, persuades them, hey, let’s go attack the Nephites and force them to make me king, because the election didn’t work. He gathers this army, but partway there, just to shorten the story, a character named Lehonti says, we have no reason to go fight against the Nephites. He takes a bunch of followers, the more part of the Lamanite army and goes up on top of the Mount Antipas. All of a sudden, here’s Amalickiah down there going, I can’t overcome the Nephites with the small army. What do I do? So he sends messengers to go up the mountain and say, hey, Lehonti, come down and talk to Amalickiah. Lehonti says, no. So they go back down and they say, Amalickiah, he said he’s not coming. And they say, well, go ask him again.

                                           30:56                   Tell him to come down here. So they go all the way up to the Mount Antipas again and say, hi, Lehonti, it’s us again. Amalickiah’s boys. Listen, he just wants to talk to you. Come down from your mountain. And Lehonti says, no. So they come back down again and they say, Amalickiah, he’s not coming down. And you’ve heard me joke. Amalickiah says, they’ll be coming down the mountain when they come. I wish it said that, that would be funny. He says, go tell him to come down. Tell him I just want to talk to him. So they go up again. I mean, there’s a phrase that Lehonti uses that sounds great. We are fixed in our mind with a determined resolution. We will not be subjected to go against the Nephites. They say, okay. So they come back down and Amalickiah says, it’s not in the text, but he probably says, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. He goes up, sends the embassy the fourth time, and they say, Amalickiah is just down the path.

                                           31:55                   Give me that pine cone. I’ll show you. Boom, right? And they pop. He’s just right down there. I just love this idea of calm down just a little bit. The ways we can apply that is kind of fun. Lehonti comes down a little bit, sees Amalickiah who’s called cunning and flattering and a murderer. And Amalickiah says, hey, I’m not your enemy. I’m your friend. Again, I’m assuming because he’s flattering. He says, I just want to learn from you, Lehonti. You’re such a great general. Here’s my idea. Bring your larger army down in the nighttime. They’ll surround my smaller army. When my smaller army sees you, they’ll say, oh, let’s surrender. Those guys are Lamanites. That’s my brother in fact. Hi, Ted. Let’s just be one big happy army again. Lehonti says, okay. And we’re like, don’t do this, Lehonti. He comes down in the nighttime, surrounds Amalickiah’s army.

                                           32:50                   Amalickiah’s army wakes up, everything they planned happens. And Amalickiah says, I will surrender my army to you if you will make me second in command. The way the Book of Mormon says that he desired to be a second leader. I just want to learn from you. So what happens? Yeah, they all wake up. The Amalickiah’s army surrenders to Lehonti. Now, Lehonti is in command. Amalickiah is second in command. And you both know if you’re second in command and you really want to be first in command and you have no conscience whatsoever, what do you do?

Hank Smith:                      33:21                   You got to kill him.

John Bytheway:               33:22                   And how does he kill him? Which is so… Thank you, Mormon, for abridging it like this.

Hank Smith:                      33:27                   He poisons him by degrees.

John Bytheway:               33:31                   If I come at you with a sword, with a javelin, with a cimeter, you know my intent. But if I come at you with a refreshing beverage, you don’t know my intent. That’s Amalickiah. He poisoned him by degrees. His last heartbeat, he thought he was in command. But I think where you’re going here is, isn’t it interesting? Four times Lehonti was invited to come down. He finally did and went from being an example to a warning. But here, Nehemiah says, I’m doing a great work. I cannot come down. Why should the work cease? They sent unto me four times after this sort. You’re right, Hank, in my margin, I’ve got Alma 46 and 47.

Hank Smith:                      34:13                   I think it’s a great contrast. Look at the one difference. He was doing something. Lehonti was up there. He wasn’t doing anything. But Nehemiah’s like, no, I’m actually doing some pretty important stuff here. I’m too busy for you. I think that putting those two stories side by side can be really helpful. By the way, all this in Nehemiah is done in the plain of Ono. When he says, come down, you don’t just say no. You say –

John Bytheway:               34:40                   Oh no. Do you know what else? Think about Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple. How he’s invited to come down and he never does it. Those are the examples we want to look to, I guess. Sadly, not Lehonti.

Hank Smith:                      34:56                   I try to make my teenage boys too busy to sin. I am doing a great work and cannot come down. Plus you want to kill me. That’s kind of keeping me from coming down to you.

John Bytheway:               35:07                   I think the lesson was named I’m Doing a Great Work because President Uchtdorf highlighted this story in a conference talk in General Conference in 2009. I think that’s why they named it, I’m doing a great work.

Hank Smith:                      35:20                   That’d be a great one to follow with your youth. Give them the talk, get a highlighter out for each of them, and let them go through that talk. Thanks for letting us take that little detour, Christina.

Dr. Christina Olson:         35:30                   I like the connection to think about the fact that he’s working versus Lehonti who’s not. And this idea that it’s really easy to allow complacency being the thing that kind of drives us from God. It’s really easy. We got a lot of easy aspects of our lives and our societies, especially compared to this ancient world. They kind of had to always be working. We have a lot more leisure time. Sometimes that’s the most dangerous aspect of our lives.

John Bytheway:               35:56                   And distraction too, you might say.

Dr. Christina Olson:         35:59                   Yeah.

John Bytheway:               36:00                   One of the things I’ve heard Hank teach is be careful to discern who are your friends and who are your enemies because Nehemiah clearly knew what they were up to. Sounds like Lehonti was not quite sure. Is this a friend or an enemy? And especially a guy that offers you a beverage.

Hank Smith:                      36:18                   If you’re doing something you swore, I would never do that. And now I’m doing that thing? You’re being poisoned. And isn’t it interesting that Lehonti thinks he’s in control the entire time, but he lost control the moment he came down just a little bit. That’s when he actually lost the control of this situation. Wow. Thanks, John. Thanks for doing that. Thanks, Christina. Let’s keep going. What happens to Nehemiah next?

Dr. Christina Olson:         36:43                   All right. Well, he finally finishes the wall. Got that in verse 15. The wall was finished in the 25th day of the month of Elul. The thing that you kind of expect to see in this story is, all right, we’re happy. Our wall is built. But it continues. The story continues saying, and there was still opposition. And then we can get a full circle with chapter seven going back to, again, these books being together, going back to this idea. We’ve got our temple, we’ve got our law, we’ve got our city and our walls. Now we’re bringing them together. Now we have Ezra returning. They probably never actually interacted. But we have the story of Ezra coming back and giving and teaching the law to the people, which is also a really interesting different aspect of the religion that they’ve never seen before. This idea that he is not only giving the law orally, so speaking it to them, but he’s also having the other priests and scribes go and teach.

                                           37:37                   So they’re going to the people to teach them a law, to help them understand it. They’re really making this more of a communal aspect of worship. You had never seen this before. They’re giving them this control or this connection to God that you hadn’t had before. The priests were doing that. The king was doing it. It was his job to be the mediator with God. We are a community now. We are a people. And now it’s in all of our hands, the community’s hands to do this individually. You learn the law, you follow it, and you worship God according to that.

Hank Smith:                      38:11                   Christina, they are now a community. The rebuild has, for all intents and purposes, has happened. What’s the rest of the book about?

Dr. Christina Olson:         38:20                   It’s a little bit of this random conglomeration of stories in here. In chapter seven, it has the little indication. They finished the law. There’s still the opposition. Chapter 12, as a community, they walk around the city and they end up at one of the gates of the temple in this procession. Chapter 8, they bring Ezra in, and it’s the people asking Ezra. Ezra, you have the law, teaches the law, which is when he reads the law, shares aloud, teaches the people. We get that communal worship aspect. So that takes one day. One day they do the law, everybody’s participating in the law. Verse 10, they have this idea of celebration going on. So the wall’s built, they’re learning the law. And he says unto them, go your way, eat the fat, drink. So celebrate, celebrate this idea that the walls are built. The last line of that verse is really nice too.

                                           39:08                   It says, “For the joy of the Lord is your strength.” The word that’s used for joy there is not the common word that’s used, this general idea of joy. That word is different. Simcha for this just general joy. The word they use in verse 10 is called is chedvah. And this is actually only used one other time in the Hebrew Bible in Chronicles, and it’s used in the context of joy and strength. So there’s this play on words that saying that the joy of the Lord is your strength. It’s a different kind of joy than just a general idea of happiness or joy.

Hank Smith:                      39:40                   Only found in one other place.

Dr. Christina Olson:         39:42                   Then the second day, this is when it gets more to the leaders, the priests, the heads of the families. And we get another, this reinstating of that Festival of Booths, the Sukkot tradition. Again, bringing back to connecting to our exodus full circle. Now we are celebrating the booth. We are telling all the people to build their own sukkot, their own booths, to celebrate it. It is a communal time of joy and aspect to celebrate this in a way that hadn’t been done before.

Hank Smith:                      40:12                   That’s tabernacles, correct?

Dr. Christina Olson:         40:14                   Yes. Mostly just any type of indication of a non-secure building, a residence. And even in verse 17, when it talks about it, it talks about the people who are doing it are all the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity made booths. Again, the people that came out of captivity from this current exile, but also referring back to those captivity in Egypt. Ending the connection, that story with Ezra and Nehemiah. We get into later chapters 11, 12, 13. They’re finishing up the story with continuing to do reforms, set up the law. This is where we get another issue of actually the same issue of intermarriage, but all going into this idea of establishing our community and defining the people that we are. The ending of Ezra Nehemiah, it doesn’t leave you in a happy place. You are happy, but you’re also not.

                                           41:07                   We are exiled. We got the edict from Cyrus. So you want Ezra and Nehemiah to be this culmination of this all, right? We’re good, we’re happy, we’re fulfilled, but they’re not. Which is why now it is that bridge into the New Testament. They haven’t completely got there yet. We’re still in this period of return and rebuild. And that’s the heritage of Judaism and how it develops. We’re still in this. They’re always looking forward to that hope for the future, remembering the past and the traditions, but there’s still more to come.

Hank Smith:                      41:38                   Christina, this has been fantastic. I feel like I really understand these texts so much more. John, I’ve said this before, that part of worshiping God is worshiping God with your mind, might, mind and strength. So I feel like when I take the time to listen to someone who knows their stuff like Christina and really understand, I feel like that’s a form of worship.

John Bytheway:               42:02                   I love that we don’t check our brains at the door when we come to church. It’s like, no, learn about it. I’m reading in Nehemiah eight when Ezra stood up to read and I’m thinking, how exciting if you had lost the book of the law, how exciting to read it. Do you mind if I read Nehemiah 8:3? He read therein before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday before the men and the women and those that could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law. Skip over to verse 8. So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly and gave the sense. And the footnote says gave the sense means gave a commentary by the power of the Holy Ghost and caused them to understand the reading. Then comes that verse you highlighted, Christina, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Imagine you haven’t heard this for years or decades, they’re reading this and how they would sit there all day and listen to it.

Dr. Christina Olson:         43:10                   You might have heard parts of it, but to actually have it, to listen to it and then be taught it, to learn and to be saying, okay, now let’s actually tell you to understand it rather than just hearing it. It’s giving them a chance to be participating in it.

Hank Smith:                      43:24                   It’s exactly what you did today for us, Christina. You gave the sense. You explained it to us.

John Bytheway:               43:30                   Gave us some backstory and…

Hank Smith:                      43:32                   It’s really fun, to understand these things. Christina, let me ask you as a biblical scholar, you might think, oh, you’ll lose your faith. You study biblical scholarship, you’ll lose your faith, yet you and so many others like you that we’ve had on this year, it increases their faith. What’s that experience been like?

Dr. Christina Olson:         43:51                   Maybe just changes my faith. One of the things that draws me to Ezra Nehemiah is that idea of community or figuring out your place or your identity. I’m not a super emotional person. I don’t always connect on the emotional level, I guess, for me. And you talked about this idea too, that the glory of God is intelligence, but that’s part of worshiping God is learning about him and learning the facts and the stories and the traditions. And that’s to me what really gets me. That’s how I practice my spirituality, my faith is when I learn better and when I know it, then I can say, yes, I really do know it. When I’m telling you this, that’s my testimony. That is me saying this happened. There’s these awesome things in the book. I love the writers of these biblical texts. They were brilliant. The way they drew in different traditions and stories and played with words, they must have been inspired somehow. You see that in the text. And so I love getting into that text, the scripture to see these are the workings of God in a way that’s very tangible and yes, complicated because we’re complicated. And learning that nitty-gritty of the issues of that really helps in my way find my path to God, how I live my religion.

Hank Smith:                      45:05                   Wow. That’s so well said.

John Bytheway:               45:07                   Well, I want to be a ready scribe one of these days. That’s my goal.

Hank Smith:                      45:13                   I really enjoyed the human part of this, which is, yeah, these are great people and they’re inspired and they’re making mistakes. The Lord is helping them deal with those mistakes and yet still have wonderful experiences. That’s my life. That’s my experience.

Dr. Christina Olson:         45:30                   These are kind of forgotten books and maybe we feel that in our life sometimes, right?

Hank Smith:                      45:35                   We talked about this before. A lot of people are going through rebuilds in their life. You want them to be glorious and perfect, but they’re not. And that’s okay.

John Bytheway:               45:45                   Some ideas I never knew before that they took their bones. Just be in the proximity of your ancestors. I think I take that for granted. When I go down 33rd South, sometimes I’ll salute mom and dad because that’s where that Wasatch Lawn is where they’re buried. Imagine having to leave that where I could never do that. And that’s really an interesting thing you brought up, especially in our tradition, our families, our ancestors being so important. This was important for them to go back to Jerusalem. I love it.

Hank Smith:                      46:21                   Christina, a big part of this was Ezra studying and explaining scripture. We could almost insert your name in there. Christina, who studies and explains scripture. Why do you enjoy that so much? I do it too. I’m not to the scholarship that you are, but I… And John loves it too. We love reading, understanding, and then explaining scripture. I can tell you love it. So I just want to know why you love it.

Dr. Christina Olson:         46:49                   Back to that idea of knowledge is spiritual power. Opens the door for a lot of people. Sometimes I feel like all of us have some degree of, I don’t feel the same as this person. I’m not worshiping the same, or I must not be doing something right to be part of this church or, you know, this community or this ward that I’m in. I’m not the same. So then when I can teach scripture and show there are different paths or journeys to finding this community of God. When I teach scripture and show that here’s the complexity, here’s the beauty of just being an imperfect person and God works through everybody like that. Sometimes it’s really just fun to show the imperfection of people in the text, even though there’s good parts too. So teaching the good part. But I really like teaching the parts that you don’t always think about or doing the stories that you don’t always want to read because they’re not nice and happy all the time. Because that’s our life. So it’s the reality of our life.

Hank Smith:                      47:45                   In speaking to the messiness of scripture and the messiness of life, sometimes we get in our head that righteousness looks a certain way. You’re supposed to have ups, do a little better and do a little better and do a little better. What happens if you take a step backwards or sideways? I’ve noticed that as you’ve taught us today, you’re saying, hey, that’s okay. That’s part of this. It’s definitely not perfect. It’s quite messy.

Dr. Christina Olson:         48:12                   That’s really why I love reading some of these texts like this and these stories. We go all directions when it comes to worship and to life and to how we live it and how we connect to God. If you look at the Psalms, they kind of run the whole gamut of worship of feelings. We also have an Old Testament to show us it can be really chaotic. And I am definitely part of that chaos. My life is very much chaos. We’re not where we thought we’d be in life. There’s a talk someone gave and in my ward a couple years ago who talks about seasons of life. And I really liked her comparison, this idea that we’re all in different seasons. And then each season, our worship and our connection with God might look a little different. Maybe we backpedal a little bit. Now I’m in the midst of kids struggling to make sure they get to church.

                                           48:58                   My husband plays the organ, so I sit with them in sacrament meeting. I have no idea what’s being said. My focus is to get them to sit in the chair and that’s my worship maybe to make sure they learn these traditions or practices of just going to church and being part of the community. Whereas at some point, they’ll be older, they’ll sit better, I’ll start listening more, and then I’ll do something a little different. It just looks different for us all. And that’s okay because that’s that promise of God in the text that he’s always there. He’s always going to fulfill his promises either when we’re ready or when he’s ready and the way it should be, even if it’s not in the way that we expect it to be. And that’s really the beauty of, especially the Old Testament and the things we learn from there.

Hank Smith:                      49:40                   So well said. Thank you for that. John, what a great day.

John Bytheway:               49:45                   We did have a great time.

Hank Smith:                      49:46                   I’ve been really touched. I’m really going to think through the non-linear worship. I think that’s beautiful. It’s okay for life to be messy. You’re making great decisions. You’re making poor decisions. There is great joy and there’s also tears. Sometimes you can’t tell the difference between the two. I love it. Christina, you’ve been just fantastic today. Thank you for your time.

Dr. Christina Olson:         50:09                   Thank you. It’s been fun to go through the scriptures and do that.

Hank Smith:                      50:12                   Yeah, this is our idea of a good time. With that, we want to thank Dr. Christina Olson for spending her time with us today. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And every episode we remember our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’re going to keep going through the Old Testament on followHIM. As a thank you to our wonderful listeners, we’d love to gift you the digital version of our book, Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. It offers short, meaningful insights drawn from our past Old Testament episodes. Visit followhim.co, that’s followhim.co to download your free copy today and you’ll also find the link to purchase the print edition. Thank you for being part of our followHIM family. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, Sydney Smith, and Annabelle Sorensen.

Pres. Russell M. Nelson: 51:14                  Whatever questions or problems you have, the answer is always found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Turn to him. Follow him.