Hey, this is a year in the Bible. It's Shelby and CJ, and we're going to wrap up both

Ezra and Nehemiah. These are separate books, but in a lot of ways, there's similar themes running

through them. And so, CJ, we're in chapters 10 through 13 of Nehemiah. Tell us about these final chapters.

So at the very end of Nehemiah 9, we have sort of this prayer of confession and the summary of the

history of Israel up to the point. And at the very end, we have this covenant renewal.

And the text says, now, because of all this, we are making an agreement in writing.

So in other words, we're going to recommit ourselves through this written document to the Lord. And then in chapter

10, we learn about the signers, Nehemiah's included among them, and we also learn about the

obligations of this new covenant renewal, or the specifics of this covenant renewal. Some of the things

that are in this

chapter are to walk in God's law, to not intermarry with idolaters, to honor the Sabbath, and to

support the ongoings of the temple and to keep it running. And then in chapter 11, we see that

the Jews try to figure out a way to populate Jerusalem and build up the population there so that

some of these things can happen. And then in chapter 12, they dedicate the wall of

Jerusalem, which is complete and they're celebrating it. And this includes singing and dancing and

music. But then in chapter 13, as we've sort of hinted at along the way, everything kind of

comes undone again.

So the very things that they made a covenant renewal for in chapter 10 are systematically

undone in chapter 13, so they ignore the tiths for temples and Levites.

They desecrate the Sabbath, they intermarry with idolaters, and they immediately break this renewed covenant.

So we actually end up on a low note here in Nehemiah.

Yeah, which you warned us about in the beginning.

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