xeb.ai  /  study  /  nehemiah  /  chapter 11
Nehemiah · Chapter XI of XIII · Worksheet

The Willing Tenth

Casting lots to inhabit what was rebuilt

Prepared for the Irvine chapter of the Google Christian Fellowship

✦

The Chapter

The wall stands, but the city inside it is thin. The leaders already live in Jerusalem; for the rest, lots are cast so that one in ten will leave village and field to settle the holy city—and the people bless all who willingly offer themselves. What follows is a census of the resettled: sons of Judah and Benjamin, priests who do the work of the house, Levites over the outside work, gatekeepers, singers, Mattaniah who leads the thanksgiving in prayer. Each name carries an assignment; overseers and daily provisions make the roll almost administrative. The chapter closes by mapping the surrounding villages, from Beersheba to the Valley of Hinnom—a people distributed, a city inhabited, a rebuilding made permanent by residence.

“And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem.”
Nehemiah 11:2
❦

Voices From the Traditions

6
Ethiopian Orthodox
“For the assistant deacons, the anagnosts, and the singers we beseech, that God may grant them to perfect the diligence of their faith”
Ethiopian Divine Liturgy · Liturgy of the Ethiopian Church, Preparatory Service litany §77 (trans. Daoud)
Eastern Orthodox
“For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God.”
St. Irenaeus of Lyons · Against Heresies IV.20.7 (ANF trans.)
Roman Catholic
“There is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”
St. Josemaría Escrivá · Conversations 114 (“Passionately Loving the World”)
Contemplative
“…love feeleth no burden, reckoneth not labours, striveth after more than it is able to do, pleadeth not impossibility…”
Thomas à Kempis · The Imitation of Christ III.5 (trans. Benham)
Reformed
“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”
Abraham Kuyper · “Sphere Sovereignty” (1880 inaugural), in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. Bratt, p. 488
American Evangelical
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Frederick Buechner · Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, s.v. “Vocation”
❖

For Discussion

3
  1. Living inside the walls meant risk and upheaval; the villages were easier. Where does God’s work still depend on people volunteering for the costlier place—and what makes such willingness worth blessing?
  2. Most of this chapter is names—gatekeepers, singers, keepers of stores. What does it mean that Scripture records them? How do you regard the unrecorded, ordinary portions of your own work?
  3. In the Time of AI · Magnifica Humanitas ¶13The encyclical insists that “all are given their own section of the wall”—scientists, entrepreneurs, workers, educators. Nehemiah 11 records gatekeepers and singers by name. What is your section of the wall, and who blesses the willing?