Bible Fiber

Welcome to Bible Fiber. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.  One thing that makes reading the Hebrew scriptures difficult is that while the Bible is telling the story of one people, the Israelites, other ancient people groups enter and exit the scene. The Israelites did no...

The Philistines were an ancient people of uncertain origins. They settled in the southern coastal region of ancient Canaan around the 12th century BCE. They formed a confederation of five coastal cities: Gath, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gaza, and Ashdod. The modern-day equivalent of their former territory covers most of the Gaza Strip and coastal Israel.  Archaeologists would love to excavate ancient Philis...

The Bible’s reference to Canaanites creates the impression to the modern reader that the Canaanites were a unified people group. Really, the term Canaanite is an umbrella term that applied to all the people groups living in the land of Canaan during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. We should not take Canaanite as an ethnic term. Canaan included many tribes, each with their own social stratification...

In over seventy episodes over the course of two years, we have done a deep dive into the 12 Minor Prophets, a monthlong minicourse on why prophecy ended, and then tackled the postexilic books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The next book on the horizon for Bible Fiber is Ezekiel. But before we start a new book, I am giving a minicourse on the Peoples of the Bible. One of the many things we have learned sinc...

When the biblical authors recorded Israel’s history, they presumed their audience was familiar with the Assyrians, Babylonians, Philistines, Amorites, Edomites, and the list goes on. I am sure that was a safe assumption at the time they wrote their story. However, most modern readers see the names of foreign people groups in the Bible as mere names on a page.  Unless you are well-versed in ancient...

This week we are studying Nehemiah 13. I divided the chapter into two parts to avoid rushing through the last nine verses of Nehemiah, which are thought-provoking to say the least.  I have had part two of Nehemiah 13 written for weeks, but the events of October 7th took center stage in my mind and life and I assume they did for many of you as well. The first few days after Hamas’s killing spree, I...

Welcome to Bible Fiber. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.  I have had the Bible Fiber episode on Nehemiah 13 written for weeks, but I have not had the power or will to release it as our regular scheduled Bible Fiber rollout. October 7th changed everything, and nothing ha...

After 12 years of governing in Judah, Nehemiah journeyed to Susa to check-in with King Artaxerxes. Recall that the king had readily given Nehemiah permission to go to Jerusalem, but the king’s only stipulation was that Nehemiah would eventually return (2:6). Nehemiah kept his word by reappearing in the Persian court to give a report of all the happenings in the Judean province. With the city walls...

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This week we are studying Nehemiah 11. The last three chapters of the book make up Ezra-Nehemiah’s final literary unit.  Ever since the edict of Cyrus, the returnees had their sights set on Jerusalem. The first wave of arrivals rebuilt the temple under the leadership of Jeshua and Zerubbabel. Seventy years later, Nehemiah’s arrival in Jerusalem moved the restoration process into phase two: rebuild...

This week we are reading Nehemiah 10. After the community got reacquainted with the teachings of the Torah and repented of their sins and the sins of their ancestors, they held a covenant renewal ceremony to affirm their commitment. Nehemiah’s three-step plan was reading, repentance, and renewal, in that order. For the Jewish people, returning to Yahweh meant returning to his commands. And for rep...

This week we are studying Chapter 9 when the people stopped feasting and began fasting. Although Chapter 9 is a continuation of the previous chapter’s theme of Torah revival, the national mood shifted from joy to sadness.  When the High Holiday period ended on the 22nd of the month, the people gathered two days later for another general assembly in Jerusalem. This was their third public reading of...

This week we are studying Chapter 8 and believe it or not this is the section I have been looking forward to the entire study, Ezra’s public reading of the Torah.  The passage begins on the first day of the seventh month when “all the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate” (8:1). On the Jewish calendar, the seventh month is jampacked with ceremonial holidays: the Feast of...

This week we are studying Nehemiah 7. The chapter has only six verses of narrative development before launching into a lengthy genealogical record. Admittedly, the list is rather boring, but thankfully the narrative section gives us plenty to unpack.  In 445 BCE, after 52 days of nonstop construction, the Jerusalem fortifications were complete, and the workers set the doors in their gates. Chapter...

This week we are studying Nehemiah 6.  The city wall was almost complete. All that remained was setting the doors in the gateways. With the window of intervention closing, Judah’s local enemies kicked their opposition campaign into overdrive. This time around, they focused all their efforts on Nehemiah. Chapter 6 is a record of the various intimidation tactics they brought against him. As the visi...

Thematically, Chapter 5 is an awkward fit in the book, an insertion that interrupts an otherwise continuous narrative. The subjects that dominated the previous chapters—the wall project and the local opposition—fade to the background in Chapter 5. At some point in Nehemiah’s governorship, Judah went through a food shortage crisis. During that time, the dual problems of hunger and poverty trumped e...

This week we are studying Nehemiah 4, an extra dramatic passage that is mined more than any other chapter in Nehemiah for application that applies to the lives of believers today.  Support the show Consider donating (one-time or recurring) to www. TheJerusalemConnection.us so we can continue to bring valuable content via podcasts free to the public. Help us increase our audience reach and improve...

This week we are reading Nehemiah 3. In chapter 3, Nehemiah paused his first-person narrative and inserted an archival record of the Jerusalem wall project. The perimeter of the wall was divided into forty-one sections with a work crew assigned to each. The crews were randomly composed of families, towns, or guilds.  Though Nehemiah is buried behind the scenes in the passage, his excellent leaders...

This week we are reading Nehemiah 2. We left off with Nehemiah on his knees, praying and fasting as he prepared to speak directly to the king on behalf of his people. Three months passed from the month of Chislev when Nehemiah heard his brother’s terrible news to the month of Nisan when Nehemiah finally made his appeal to the king (2:1).  Why did Nehemiah not immediately take his problem to the ki...

We finished Ezra and we are now launching our study of Nehemiah. Remember that in the Septuagint and the Masoretic text, Ezra and Nehemiah were originally part of one scroll. They were only separated into two distinct books by early church fathers around the third century who understandably interpreted the introduction in Nehemiah as the start of a new book.  The original layout told the story of...

This week we are finishing the book of Ezra which ends with a resolution to the remnant’s intermarriage crisis. Ezra’s emotional reaction to the community’s guilt continued. The narrator wrote, “Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God” (10:1). Most likely, Ezra’s public repentance occurred in the temple courtyard because “a very great assembly of...

In our study of Ezra 9 we learn how Ezra’s Torah teaching put the community under the microscope. Ezra brought the law and the law brought conviction.  Only four months after Ezra’s arrival (458 BCE), Judean officials reported to him that the returnees had a serious intermarriage problem. These informants were quite possibly the judges Ezra appointed when he set up a judicial system for the provin...

This week we are studying chapter 8, the continuation of the Ezra memoir. Before the caravan of returnees sets out, Ezra recruits volunteers to join him, especially Levites and temple servants. The chapter also describes a bit about their travel preparations and reveals Ezra’s main concern. While the actual journey is not the chapter’s focus, the narrator highlights the particulars of their depart...

This week we are studying chapter 7, the next phase of the restoration process. The second literary unit is different from the first both chronologically and stylistically. Yet, the plot of the second half followed the same pattern as the first. God, in his sovereignty, prompted a Persian king to authorize a large group of Judean exiles to return to Jerusalem and restore their nation. Sound famili...

This week we are continuing our study of the book of Ezra, diving into chapter 6. This chapter concludes the story of the first two decades of the people’s restoration to Judah. From the narrator’s perspective, the first half of the book was the “old age,” a lookback at the tale of the founding fathers of restored Israel and their completion of the temple. Our last chapter, and episode, ended with...