Today is the 11th day of August.

Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible.

Welcome back to the Global Camp Fire.

Hi everybody, it is so good to be here today.

I'm grateful.

Really, I am trying to practice gratitude, especially in this 20th year, just still marveling that.

Ah, this is the 20th 11th day of August. And there hasn't been a missed day, and it's just crazy, so I'm grateful to be here with you.

Once again, around the global campfire, taking the next step forward, and August 11th brings

us to new territory.

We begin a brand new book.

We concluded the book of Ezra.

And so today we will begin the book of Nehemiah,

which is one of the biblical texts that is a part of a grouping of books known as the books of history.

And it's not like we're like really jumping into completely new territory.

Nehemiah pretty much picks up where Ezra leaves off.

In Christian tradition, Ezra is considered to be at least one of the authors of the book of Nehemiah

because there was a point in history before the manuscripts were broken up, that Ezra and Nehemiah were a single

manuscript. So the way that we understand this is that Nehemiah was a Hebrew exile in the Persian

Empire. So if we'll remember, it was Babylon that conquered the kingdom of Judah and destroyed the temple and ruined Jerusalem.

And then subsequently the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonian Empire.

And the Jewish people had been carried away by Babylon so now they're being

assimilated into the Persian Empire it's just the Persian kings were favorable to the Hebrew

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