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Ezra and Nehemiah: An Introduction and Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

“The chequered story of the Kings, a matter of nearly five centuries, had ended disastrously in 587 B.C. with the sack of Jerusalem, the fall of the monarchy and the removal to Babylonia of all that made Judah politically viable. It was a death to make way for a rebirth.” So begins Derek Kidner in this introduction and commentary to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah which chart the Jews’ return from...

rebuilding of the wall, almost asks to be seen as a symbol of Israel’s separatism: the material expression of a siege mentality. While this is not altogether fair, since the wall had been torn down in a campaign of slander and intimidation and rebuilt in a spirit of faith, it is true that Nehemiah used it not only for physical protection but for spiritual quarantine, to defend the sabbath from violation (Neh. 13:15–22). It is also true that separatism was now being taken with new seriousness as a
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