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Nehemiah · Chapter XIII of XIII · Worksheet

Remember Me, O My God

Everything regresses; Nehemiah returns; the book ends in prayer

Prepared for the Irvine chapter of the Google Christian Fellowship

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The Chapter

Some years on, Nehemiah is back at the Persian court, and in his absence the covenant of chapter 10 quietly fails point by point. Eliashib the priest fits out a temple chamber for Tobiah—the old enemy now furnished inside the house of God. The Levites’ portions go unpaid and the singers scatter to their fields; the Sabbath fills with winepresses, grain heaps and Tyrian fish-sellers; children of mixed marriages can no longer speak the language of Judah. Nehemiah returns and reforms fiercely: Tobiah’s furniture thrown out, the tithe restored, the gates shut before the Sabbath, offenders confronted with startling violence. The book does not end in triumph but in a petition repeated to the last line: “Remember me, O my God, for good.”

“Remember me, O my God, for good.”
Nehemiah 13:31
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Voices From the Traditions

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Ethiopian Orthodox
“Remember them in Thy heavenly kingdom, and remember me, thy sinful servant”
Anaphora of the Apostles · Ethiopian Divine Liturgy, Anaphora of the Apostles §20 (trans. Daoud)
Eastern Orthodox
“Truly, I do not think I have even made a beginning yet.”
Abba Sisoes (at the point of death) · Apophthegmata, Sisoes 14 (trans. Ward)
Roman Catholic
“And my whole hope is only in Your exceeding great mercy. Give what You command, and command what You will.”
St. Augustine · Confessions X.29 (trans. Pilkington)
Contemplative
“The spiritual journey is not a career or a success story. It is a series of humiliations of the false self that become more and more profound.”
Thomas Keating · The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation (Wit Lectures, Harvard Divinity School)
Reformed
“Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
John Owen · Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, ch. II (Works vol. 6)
American Evangelical
“It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest.”
Eugene H. Peterson · A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, ch. 1, p. 16
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For Discussion

3
  1. Every promise of chapter 10 is broken within a few years. Why do communal reforms decay—and what sustains conviction after the founding energy, or the founding leader, is gone?
  2. Nehemiah’s methods are fierce—confrontation, expulsion, even violence. Where is the line between zeal that protects something holy and zeal that damages people? How does the book leave that question open?
  3. In the Time of AI · Magnifica Humanitas ¶106Nehemiah returns to find every reform undone. The encyclical warns that invoking ethics in the abstract is not enough; oversight must not abdicate its responsibility. What keeps safeguards—in covenant or in code—from quietly eroding?