September 6th
Ezra’s public reading of Scripture seems to have sparked a change of heart among the returned exiles. After a joyous celebration and mournful repentance, the people decide to formalize their recommitment to God in a covenant renewal ceremony. The Israelites vow to live up to their calling as Yahweh’s royal priesthood and holy nation. They swear an oath, signed and sealed by priests and Levites. The people promise to honor Yahweh’s sacred space. They will provide for Yahweh’s house by contributing wood, the firstfruits of their crops, and tithes. The people also promise to honor Yahweh’s sacred time. They will rest every week on the Sabbath. Every year, the Israelites will celebrate the festivals that tell the story of Yahweh’s redemption. Every Sabbath year, they will let their land rest and cancel all debts. Yahweh’s kingdom of priests has renewed its commitment to the covenant and started to put down new roots in the land of promise. Is this renewed commitment more like a starting line or a finish line? Have they finally arrived, or are they just beginning? Have the people turned their hearts to Yahweh as the prophets encouraged? Tomorrow, we’ll find out.
September 7th
Today, we reach the conclusion of Ezra-Nehemiah. It is a huge downer. Nehemiah returns from a business trip to Persia to discover the people are breaking their freshly renewed agreement to follow Yahweh, and not in minor or accidental ways. With brazen disregard, they are not sending tithes of grain to the Levites who serve in Yahweh’s sacred space. The Levites rely on that food to live. The people of Jerusalem were dishonoring Yahweh’s sacred time by working, buying, and selling on the Sabbath. Within sight of Jerusalem’s newly rebuilt walls, no less. All this backsliding sends Nehemiah on a rampage. He beats people and pulls out their hair, screaming that they must obey the commands of the Torah. It’s intense. His last recorded words are a prayer asking that God remember him with favor because, well, at least he tried. It’s a strange, anticlimactic ending—one that matches the whole Ezra- Nehemian book, in a way. Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah had powerful visions for rebuilding the Kingdom of Israel and the passionate determination to complete their work. It turns out all the zeal in the world can’t change the human condition. The Israelites’ problems before the exile always traced back to hard hearts. Israel’s problem after the exile is the same. After decades of destruction and deportation, the people came home. But they never fully return to God, and God’s glory never returns to the temple. If Yahweh’s covenant partners are ever going to love and obey their God, they’re going to need a more profound transformation than stricter law enforcement, social-system reforms, and building projects can bring. They need new, soft hearts. Hearts not of stone but of flesh. Hearts that God promised to give humanity. When will that day come?
September 8th
Today brings us to Chronicles, the final book of the Hebrew Bible (as originally arranged). It begins with a nine-chapter genealogy, chronicling hundreds of names and family histories from the time of creation to the period after Israel’s Babylonian exile. Remember that the long lists of names are more than simple record keeping. Imagine a family tree with your own parents, grandparents, and extended family. To someone else, it would just be a directory of strangers. To you, each name would represent a life full of stories, lessons, and memories. In this case, the stories follow the family line back to Adam. For ancient Israelite readers, these family trees were a shorthand way of retelling the history of their people. Each name evokes a story: “Adam” takes us back under the fruit trees of Eden. When we read “Noah,” we remember the torrential downpour of God’s de-creation and the shimmering rainbow of promise on the other side. “Abraham” brings to mind long journeys, Egyptian detours, counting stars, a smoking firepot, a runaway slave, a ram on a mountain, laughter, failure, promises, blessing, and hope. Seen in the right light, the long list of names can evoke a long picture of beauty. Watch today’s video to learn how Chronicles uses genealogies—and much more—to reshape the past stories of Israel to generate hope for a better future.
September 9th
Saul’s unfaithfulness. David’s rise to the throne. Yahweh’s blessing over the new king. Feeling déjà vu while reading today? That’s probably because the chronicler draws heavily on the books of Samuel and Kings. So heavily, in fact, that many of the stories are almost identical. Almost. It can be tempting to breeze through these duplicate stories. But skimming the surface risks missing the chronicler’s genius in strategically editing and compiling his work. Upon careful reading, one notices meaningful omissions and interesting new details. Take, for example, the list of men who joined David’s cause (1 Chron. 12:23- 40). Notice key details around the names and numbers. The men who rally around David come from all 12 tribes, even Levi. And they don’t just bring their swords. They come with flour, fig cakes, wine, and olive oil, portraying the 12 tribes uniting under Yahweh’s anointed king. Edenic abundance? Joy in Israel? This is starting to sound like something from the prophets! The chronicler doesn’t just repeat stories from the past. He recasts them in a way that reminds people they have reason to hope for the future. It’s been a long, arduous journey. But when you zoom way out and notice the pattern of God’s love, protection, and promise for life ongoing, the old story points forward to a new messianic king rising to power. The cycle of faith and fear will finally break under this king’s wise and benevolent rules, ushering in a new era of joy, peace, and abundance. Someone just like David, only better.
September 10th
If it walks like a priest, talks like a priest, sacrifices like a priest, and ministers like a priest, it might just be a … king? In today’s reading, the chronicler shifts his focus from David’s role as the anointed king to that of the royal priest. David builds his holy city on Mount Zion. He then makes Jerusalem the spiritual capital of Israel by setting up a tent with the ark of the covenant inside. To celebrate, David throws an epic party. There’s singing, dancing, and marching bands. The king himself leaps and spins through the streets, leading a lively parade of Levites (the priestly tribe) in his wake. Israel’s king goes up a new, Heaven-on-Earth mountain to bring the ark of Yahweh’s presence back into the Eden tent? What an incredible moment. And there’s more. When King David brings the ark into Jerusalem, he does things only a priest is supposed to do. He sets up a tabernacle, which is technically the Levites’ job (Num. 1:51, 4:1-33). He wears a priest’s linen uniform, including an ephod (see Exod. 28). He even offers sacrifices to Yahweh. This responsibility was strictly off-limits to anyone outside the priestly family line (Num. 3). At the end of Jerusalem’s spectacular jamboree, David blesses the Israelites, just like Aaron, the high priest (Num. 6:22-27; Deut. 10:8). Watch today’s video to learn more about David the priestly king and how he points forward to humanity’s true royal priest to come.
September 11th
“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, … David remained in Jerusalem” (1 Chron. 20:1). Uh oh. We’ve seen this story before. When David abdicates his responsibilities, things end in disaster—sexual assault and murder plunge David’s family into a spiral of relational feuding and fractures. This time, the story skips right over David’s catastrophic sins of adultery and murder. It might seem as if the chronicler is trying to sweep David’s dirty secrets under a rug, but the chronicler has read Samuel and Kings. He knows his readers have too. He omits this failure in David’s story to inspire hope for a future messianic king—one who would never take another man’s wife and cover it up with murder. This doesn’t mean the chronicler leaves out all of David’s mistakes, though. Today’s reading does include the story about David taking a military census instead of trusting Yahweh. Here, the chronicler uses a story of major transgression to portray David as a priestly intercessor. David pleads with Yahweh to spare the people from severe judgment. This is a hyperlink to Moses after the golden calf incident, begging Yahweh to spare the people (Exod. 32:30-32). David also builds an altar on the future foundation of Yahweh’s temple. When David offers sacrifices on this altar, he calls on Yahweh, who responds by sending fire from heaven—just like the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kgs. 18:36-38). A king is coming. Like Moses, he will intercede to save the people. He will channel God’s mountaintop power like Elijah, offer sacrifices like Aaron, and succeed where David failed.
September 12th
Who built Israel’s first temple in Jerusalem? If you asked the authors of Samuel and Kings, they’d say King Solomon. He imported the wood, assembled the workers, and oversaw the whole construction project. From the first foundation stone laid, to the last golden bowl placed by the altar, Solomon oversaw everything. But if you asked the author of Chronicles, he would tell you David did the heavy lifting on the temple project. In today’s reading, we learn that David gave his son, Solomon, a generous head start on the temple’s construction. He recruited stonecutters, stockpiled iron and bronze, set aside gold and silver from the royal treasury, mustered priests and Levites to staff the building when it was completed, and rallied all the leaders of Israel to support the project. All Solomon had to do was put the building blocks together. The chronicler also tells us why David couldn’t build the temple himself. He shed too much blood during his many wars. Though David’s military campaigns disqualified him from building Yahweh’s sacred house, his victories brought security and rest for Solomon’s reign. So Solomon, whose name means “peace,” builds the temple instead. For the chronicler, the royal priest and the glorious temple are a match made in Heaven. By having David play a large role in its construction, he can point to a future day when a better king and a more glorious temple will arrive together.