The If you're reading a book or watching a movie or consuming a story or anything that's been written,

any cultural text, if you're consuming anything that's been done in the past that has stood the test of time

and it's great and lots of smart people regarded as great and there are elements in it where you look at it

your first time through and you're going I don't really what is that I don't

really understand why we're doing that I don't like it

the best assumption is that all the smart people who think it's really good are probably right

and there's a reason it stood the test of time.

That said, I used to think that Nehemiah and Ezra and other parts of the Old Testament

were real boring because they boringly repeated stuff. I don't like

repetition. I remember that was the first time I read it maybe the second time third time I went through this but at some point when I was younger and I was reading through Ezra Nehemiah as a kid

I remember having it click like hey wait a minute Nehemiah 7 I have read all of this material in that exact order.

This is just a repeat, this is Control C, Control V.

I mean, they didn't have that when I was a kid, but you know what I mean?

It's just a

carbon copy of something that happened earlier

what are we doing trying to pad the page count here and then a little bit of time

goes by and read through it a few more times since then I've thought through it a few more times since then.

And now I get it more, I think.

I'm understanding why this great big block of repeated material in Nehemiah Chapter 7, that's a repeat of Ezra Chapter 2, is here.

And I think one of the biggest reasons that we get this big block of repeat is because one of the central themes of Ezra and Nehemiah is

remembrance. How do you remember things? You repeat it. How do you know what

ought to be remembered?

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