Stale Bread

Consider, first of all, Ezra and his assistants in the newly rebuilt city of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 8:1–11). All around them is the newly dressed stone on which they have laboured so hard since their unexpected return from exile. Most of these people have never lived outside Babylon, and the Word of God is an alien document, the kind of thing that their grandparents talked about wistfully as they described the old days of freedom. What is Ezra the priest to do with them? First of all, he asks the carpenters to do one more bit of construction, and erect a wooden platform in one of the city’s main squares. Then he gathers all the people together and begins to read God’s word to them from the platform. As the crowd listens to these strange words, Ezra’s assistants are moving among them, reading the same words and explaining them. There is some doubt here as to the precise meaning of the word in Nehemiah 8:8. Some versions say they ‘translated’ the words, others that they ‘made them clear’; and the original Hebrew says that they ‘divided them up’. Whichever one we choose, it is clear that they are making the Word of God plain to those for whom it is strange.