What Is Really God’s Word when the Bible Disagrees with Itself?

We don’t talk about Ezra and Nehemiah very much in church. They don’t appear very often in the lectionary. They are historical books which are boring to some, and they contain long lists of names, which tend to be boring to everyone. However, these books come from a particularly interesting period in the history of Israel. After Cyrus conquered the Babylonian empire, he decided to allow the exiles from Judah to return home. We tend to imagine everyone being exiled and returning at his moment in one triumphant homeward march. We like to believe that everyone was on the same page. Though they may have had enemies around them, all the people of Jerusalem stood united behind leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah. Unfortunately, that is a massive oversimplification. The truth is, Babylon didn’t exile everyone, and not everyone returned, but those that did had shaped their culture in the furnace of Babylonian pluralism and now had some very strict ideas about what it meant to be the people of God. With three different groups: those who never left, those who left and then returned, and those who left but remained in foreign lands, this moment in history was filled with conflict and controversy that is hidden in our Biblical text.

We may think that Nehemiah’s enemies were all foreigners, outside the people of Israel, but one of them was named Tobiah. That is a distinctly Jewish name. At least some of Nehemiah’s enemies were not foreigners, but fellow Jews who opposed his building projects. In fact, we can see a few contradictory opinions on these topics throughout Scripture. While a major focus of the book of Ezra is the rebuilding of the temple and this is also important for the prophet Haggai, Isaiah 66, which most scholars agree was written during this time of conflict, says that God doesn’t need a temple. “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; so what kind of house could you build for me, what sort of place for me to rest?” God doesn’t need a temple. The whole world belongs to God. God doesn’t need a house made of wood and stone.

Meanwhile, Nehemiah was mostly focused on building a wall for Jerusalem. For Nehemiah, this seemed to be as much about respect for his ancestors as it was for security (Nehemiah 2:5). The Persian king sent him back to Jerusalem with some political authority and access to building materials so that he could repair the wall. Within the book of Nehemiah, he faced numerous challenges from people who are portrayed as his enemies. And if you look at the book uncritically, they certainly seem like bad guys. How could we oppose the building of a wall to keep the people safe?

In Zechariah 2:1-5, the prophet sees a vision of a man with a measuring line, trying to get a sense of the width and length of Jerusalem, presumably to build a wall. However, the prophet’s angelic companions say that Jerusalem doesn’t need a wall. There will be so many people in it that a wall couldn’t contain them all. Instead, the LORD will be with them to protect them as a wall of fire. We can read two arguments against the wall from this passage. One, with multitudes of people, the wall wouldn’t be so much a matter of protection as one of separation, leaving some people stuck outside the wall, a lower class of citizen. The lack of a wall is perhaps more egalitarian. Two, letting go of a stone wall of security and relying on God’s promise is a matter of faith. Not building the wall demonstrates that the post-exilic community trusts completely in God for protection.

This may seem trivial now, but it was a very contentious issue at the time. We can only imagine the factions and politics of the day. Nehemiah was genuinely afraid that his enemies would try to kill him. Either that was actually a possibility or the stakes were high enough that Nehemiah believed it could be. The post-exilic community faced a complicated challenge. Separated by two generations and exposure to entirely different cultural forces, how could these two groups come together to form one people?

But this also provides a challenge for modern readers of the Bible. Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai believed they had God on their side with regard to their building projects. Isaiah and Zechariah also believed they had God on their side. Their words were written down in our Scripture, a most precious gift from God, immortalizing their bitter disagreements. So what are we to do with this rivalry reflected in our Scripture? How should we make sense of this debate? How can both sides claim to be coming from God when they obviously disagree?

As Christians, we are often called to discern God’s voice in the world, wading through the chaos and confusion of our day to determine how God is working and what God wants from us. There are many good tools for making this determination. Liberation theologians might say that God’s voice is clearest when coming from the mouths of the oppressed and marginalized. Among the poor and downtrodden, God is at work. While this is certainly a good way of looking at things, Lutheran tradition gives us a specific criterion upon which we can base our search for God’s will. Whatever points to Christ, is from God. If something leads us to the cross, reminding us of Jesus crucified and raised, then it is from God; if not, we can’t be certain.

This controversy about building projects in post-exilic Jerusalem is a perfect example of this way of thinking at work because in Christ, both sides have a good answer. The people who favored building wanted a place where they could go to honor God, a place where God would visit them. They wanted a wall around Jerusalem for security but also for identity. They needed to believe that they were still a community, set apart by God as holy. In a very globalized world, they wanted there to be a place of quiet holiness. The other side opposed building a temple because they didn’t believe God could be contained in a building of stone and wood, inanimate lifeless things. They were afraid that building a temple would return the people to old hierarchies, with some people being more worthy than others to stand in God’s presence. They feared that people would see God as being only for Jerusalem and not the world. They feared the wall would separate people instead of bringing the community together and drawing the circle wider around more and more believers in the LORD.

Both sides have valid concerns and fears. Though we may want to hold to one side over another, I think they all find the concerns answered in Christ. God’s Word incarnate, Jesus was and is the place where we can go to meet with God. God isn’t contained in lifeless inanimate building materials, but the fullness of God did dwell with us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus provided a call and identity to his new community, the church, but he didn’t isolate them. He sent the church out to the entire world, and he broke boundaries in his own day, visiting with people on the margins of society and calling all to join in repenting and turning their lives around to participate in the inbreaking of God’s kingdom on earth. Jesus Christ, fully God and man, bears even the paradoxes of Old Testament rivalries. In Christ, the gridlock of old debates is broken as he leads the church in imagining a new way forward, one in which both sides of the debate are heard and the word of God from both of them is fulfilled.