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A List from Ezra Repeated in Nehemiah

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Ralph Mayhew (2019), public domain

A Bible reader making their way through the historical books of the Old Testament could be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu after finishing Nehemiah, chapter 7.

If this describes you, the good news is, you’re not wrong! With a couple of exceptions[1], Nehemiah 7:6–73 is an exact copy of Ezra 2:1–70. While these passages are not the sort of fast-paced narrative that might captivate a modern reader, they are an accountant’s dream. These passages give a thorough list of the people who moved back to Jerusalem from Babylon during the reign of Cyrus. (See Ezra 1:1–11.)

Many Christians struggle to read a passage like this once. So why would it be in our Bibles twice?

The answer cannot be merely that Nehemiah found the scroll and wrote down what he read (Neh 7:5). Just a chapter later some Torah scrolls were read in public but were not copied into Nehemiah’s narrative. Something else is going on.

The current article is a case study of what Peter wrote about recently. When the Bible quotes or alludes to other parts of the Bible, we should take extra care to understand.

Ezra 2

The historical context of both passages is important. In Ezra 2, we have a list of the people “whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:5). God had put it in the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia, to send some of the captured Jewish people back to Jerusalem. The temple had been destroyed when Nebuchadnezzar’s army had leveled the city, and the people of God were now being charged (by a pagan king!) to rebuild what had been knocked down.

In the long list of chapter 2, the author took great care to list the people who returned by clans and families (Ezra 2:2–35). However, we also read of people specifically gifted and trained to help with the temple rebuilding efforts: the caravan back to Jerusalem included priests (Ezra 2:36–39), Levites (Ezra 2:40), singers (Ezra 2:41), sons of gatekeepers (Ezra 2:42), temple servants (Ezra 2:43–54), and sons of Solomon’s servants (Ezra 2:55–57).

What is the point of the list in Ezra 2? This thorough accounting shows that Cyrus really did let people leave for Jerusalem and that they were prepared for the work of rebuilding the house of the Lord and resuming temple worship. Much of the rest of Ezra recounts the success of those rebuilding efforts.

Nehemiah 7

By the time we get to Nehemiah 7, somewhere between 70-80 years have passed since that multitude hiked back to Jerusalem. Nehemiah is handing over the governorship of Jerusalem (Neh 7:2) after having successfully managed the rebuilding of the city wall (Neh 7:1).

But the work of reconstruction was not complete. The temple had been reopened and the wall was repaired and functioning, but the city itself was still a wreck. “The city was wide and large, but the people within it were few, and no houses had been rebuilt” (Neh 7:4). There was a third phase to the rebuilding efforts yet to come.

Then Nehemiah discovered the Ezra 2 scroll:

Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be enrolled by genealogy. And I found the book of the genealogy of those who came up at the first, and I found written in it: (Neh 7:5)

If we wonder why the long passage was included twice, we can start here. Nehemiah calls this “the book of the genealogy.” The leaders would rebuild the city by tribe and clan, so the genealogical records of those who repopulated the city were vital.

This played out later in Nehemiah. As the leaders made efforts to repopulate the city of Jerusalem, they cast lots to relocate people from the surrounding area (Neh 11:1). But when the list of people who settled in Jerusalem is given in Nehemiah 11:3–24, it is organized in part by tribe.

One List, Two Purposes

Although Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 are almost identical passages, the contexts show that the lists and enumerations were used for two different purposes. In Ezra, the list confirmed that Cyrus made good on his promise and that the returnees were ready to rebuild the temple. In Nehemiah, the list was recalled for genealogical purposes in an effort to rebuild and repopulate the city of Jerusalem.

There are several places in the Bible—like the tabernacle instructions and construction in Exodus—that seem repetitive, and we may wonder why God would preserve such passages for our benefit. Instead of viewing these passages with frustration or impatience, we can humbly ask God to teach us.

Often, these repetitions are instances of God’s people using his word in a faithful way. In addition to learning about each of the passages involved, we have examples for our instruction.

[1] These two passages are not exactly identical, and the small discrepancies have caused large stumbling blocks for some people. All of God’s word is important, including these differences, but that is not the focus of the present article.

What to Do When One Passage Refers to Another

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Though the Bible was written by dozens of human authors across centuries, it also claims to have been written by a single divine author (2 Tim 3:16) who was and is and is come. For that reason, these 66 books are all parts of that one great book, the Good Book, that the Lord caused to be written and preserved for his people through the ages.

You may have heard about New Testament quotes of the Old Testament. But that is not the only sort of intertextuality present in the Bible. Because the Bible is one unfolding revelation of God’s rule through his chosen Messiah, later portions of the Bible make constant reference to earlier portions.

Examples

In Ephesians 4:8, Paul quotes Psalm 68:18. And Psalm 68 itself (in Ps 68:1) quotes Numbers 10:35.

Hebrews 3:7-11 quotes Psalm 95. And Psalm 95:8 refers to the events of Exodus 17 and Numbers 20.

Mark 4:12 quotes Isaiah 6, but Isaiah 6 is difficult to understand apart from its allusions to texts such as Psalms 115 and 135.

Many places in the Old Testament reference “steadfast love and faithfulness” (2 Sam 2:6, Ps 25:10, Ps 40:11, Prov 3:3, Is 16:5, etc.), a pair of treats heavy with allusion to the character of the God in covenant with Israel (Ex 34:6).

What to Do

So quotations and allusions are not only what happens from the New Testament to the Old Testament. They also occur from later OT texts back to earlier ones. Identfying an OT quote in a NT passage may be only the first step in a linear chain of references that go farther and farther back.

That means that, in order to understand the passage with the quote, we must go back and understand the passage being quoted. Ancient authors didn’t quote older texts the way we today turn things into soundbites.

I’ve written before about what to do with such quotes. I’ll restate the principles here, but I encourage you to check out that blog post for further explanation.

  1. NT quotes of the OT are referencing passages, not verses.
  2. Don’t read past the OT quotes.
  3. Look up the OT quotes and study them in context.
  4. Consider how the NT author employs the OT context and repurposes it for his audience.
  5. What seems obvious may not be all that obvious.

These principles apply just as much to quotations or allusions from an OT text to a prior OT text, as to quotations or allusions from a NT text to an OT text. Such connections are like divine road maps showing us how the Good Book fits together. Let’s take advantage of these opportunities to deepen our understanding of the entire body of God’s revelation.

Paul’s Letter With the Most OT Quotations

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Last week, we saw a sudden bump in traffic to our list of New Testament books that quote the Old Testament, thanks to the game show Jeopardy!

On November 16, the clue to the final round was “Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations.” And there was much uproar when the contestant who responded with “Who are the Hebrews” was credited with being correct. So the fact-checkers among the show’s fans have been visiting our site in droves to observe that we’ve actually got Romans at the top of the list.

The biggest online uproar has been over the fact that most contemporary scholars believe Paul didn’t even write Hebrews, despite the King James Bible crediting the book to him. But I think the bigger issue is simply: What counts as a “quotation”? Because Hebrews has more OT references than Romans only if you count allusions (such that you count every reference to Moses, covenant, priest, or sacrifice). But by any measure of clear quotations or explicit citations of an OT text, Romans wins.

The Jeopardy! contestant with the correct answer should have blown out the others but instead lost the game!

Dr. Greg Lanier from Reformed Theological Seminary agrees that this is the more substantive problem with the Jeopardy! clue. His piece at the Gospel Coalition blog explains with much clarity and detail.

Check it out!

What to Do When the New Testament Quotes the Old

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“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” (Matt 1:23)

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46)

“Not one of his bones will be broken.” (John 19:36)

“You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” (Heb 5:5)

Since the Bible had no verse divisions until the 16th century AD, we ought to consider what this implies about how to read and study the Bible. Ancient readers had no map or reference system to pinpoint particular statements. They could not speak with precision about a textual location such as Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14.

Instead, they referenced Scriptures by broad indicators such as:

  • “…in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush…” (Mark 12:26)
  • “…the scroll of the prophet Isaiah…He found the place where it was written…” (Luke 4:17)
  • “the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah…” (John 12:38)
  • “he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way…” (Heb 4:4)

They did not quote things the way we do. They did not have MLA- or APA-style citations, word-perfect precision, or bibliographical indices.

In fact, most people didn’t read their own copies of the Scripture. Most of what they knew about Scripture came through oral delivery, repetition, and memorization.

So if we read our Bibles only like 21st century students at institutions of higher education, we will not be reading them like 1st century commoners, or even nobility, receiving these remarkable works of literature from the hands of Jesus’ first followers.

What does this mean?

1. NT quotes of the OT are referencing passages, not verses.

Often there’s a verbal connection to the exact verses being quoted. For example, when Peter wants to make a point about being “living stones” (1 Pet 2:5) he grabs a few key statements with the word “stone” in them (1 Pet 2:6-8). But his goal is not to produce sound bytes fitting for a radio interview, or back-cover blurbs promoting a book. He believes the referenced OT passages have something of their own to say, building a theology of God’s stone-construction program, which Peter now interprets and applies for a new audience.

2. Don’t read past the OT quotes.

When a NT author quotes the OT, he believes the OT passage has an argument to make that he now commandeers for his own use. The quotes are not window dressing, with the real argument coming before or after the quote. No, the quotes are a fundamental part of the argument. The quotes contain the premises upon which the conclusion stands. We might misunderstand the conclusion if we haven’t identified the premises (in their original context).

3. Look up the OT quotes and study them in context.

To use the four quotes from the top of this post: “Immanuel” had a fulfillment in Isaiah’s day that illuminates why Jesus’ fulfillment was so much greater, and even unexpected (Isaiah 7-8). Jesus’ feelings of abandonment don’t capture the whole story of what happened on the cross (Psalm 22). Jesus’ death was more about the idea of Passover than it was about checking off a prerequisite prediction about bodily injury (Exodus 12). Christ’s appointment as high priest involved more than a particular pronouncement from on high; it involved lasting victory over the rebellious kings of the earth (Psalm 2).

4. Consider how the NT author employs the OT context and repurposes it for his audience.

Sometimes the NT author applies a timeless principle. Sometimes he makes a theological connection to the person or work of Jesus Christ. Sometimes he sees a shadow that has become reality. Sometimes he identifies a pattern of life meant to be followed.

5. What seems obvious may not be all that obvious.

When Jesus explains the parable of the soils to his disciples, he references Isaiah 6 (Mark 4:11-12). Many quickly conclude that Jesus is laying out a strategy for intentional deception by parable. This seems obvious if we look only at the precise words and statements being quoted. But go back to read Isaiah 6, in the context of Isaiah’s book of prophecy, in the context of all the prophets, and only then does it become apparent that Jesus’ parables are actually meant to remove deception, to make things crystal clear (something which Mark explicitly suggests—Mark 4:21-22). Jesus is not trying to make people blind. He’s trying to expose the fact that they are already blind because they worship blind and deaf idols and refuse to listen to him. They become like what they worship.1 We see in many other places that the parables were far more illuminating than obfuscating (Mark 3:23ff, 7:17-23, 12:12; Luke 12:41, 15:1-3, 18:1, 18:9, 19:11).

Conclusion

Bible study is for everyone, even ordinary people. But that doesn’t make it quick or easy. Let’s do good work so we can understand the meaning these authors intended to communicate to us, especially when the NT uses the OT to make its point.

Additional Resources

Nothing surpasses Beale and Carson’s tome, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Baker Academic, 2007), which analyzes every NT quotation of and credible allusion to the OT. This reference work shows how important it is to look up OT quotes in their context.

The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers (Kregel Academic, 2018). In this book, Abner Chou explains how biblical writers made use of earlier scriptures. Along the way he gives many examples to prove that the quoting authors were concerned with the quotes’ original context, and Chou shows how the quoting authors appropriated that original context for their new purposes.

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1I am indebted to G.K.Beale, We Become What We Worship (IVP Academic, 2009) for these insights about Jesus’ parables and Isaiah 6.

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Does the New Testament Misquote the Old Testament?

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When you look up Old Testament passages quoted in the New Testament, you may notice that they don’t always line up exactly. For example, look at Isaiah 61:1-2, and then look at Luke’s quote of those verses in Luke 4:18-19:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor. (Is 61:1-2)

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

Michael S. Heiser explains the cause for discrepancy in this brief article. In short, the New Testament authors were typically working off a Greek translation of the Hebrew original. So our Old Testaments are translating the Hebrew directly into English. But when the NT quotes the OT, our English New Testaments are translating a Greek translation of the original Hebrew. The more languages involved in the conversion, the more adjustment gets made at each step.

For a helpful example, try the following experiment. Go to Google translate, and translate a normal English phrase (such as, “My shoulder hurts from throwing too much at baseball practice yesterday”) into any other language. Copy the result. Now paste that text and translate it back into English. After just those two steps, going into Danish and back, I got: “My shoulder hurts to throw too much of baseball practice yesterday.” The discrepancies from the original should not surprise us.

(I understand that going from English to Danish to English—two total languages—is not identical to going from Hebrew to Greek to English—three total languages. My point is just to show, to an audience that is likely unilingual, what happens when you have two steps in translation.)

This doesn’t mean we can’t trust translations. It just means we have to be reasonable and sensible about how language works. Remember: The original languages don’t function like a code to be cracked. They were real documents written by real people in ordinary languages. There’s no need for concern when languages function linguistically.

Heiser’s article helpfully explains this example. Check it out!

What To Do When the NT Quotes the OT

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Mike Leake has some great advice for what we should do when we’re reading the New Testament, and it quotes an Old Testament verse. He looks at 2 Cor 4:13, where Paul quotes Psalm 116:10, and he shows how Paul has the entire Psalm in mind as he makes his argument. Leake’s analysis is rich and compelling.

Then he concludes:

But we miss all of this if we think the biblical authors quoted verses the way that we do. So here is a little tip for your Bible reading. Whenever you see that a New Testament passage is a quotation of an Old Testament passage, don’t just go back and read that one verse in the OT. Instead go back and read the entire Psalm, or the entire context of that quote. It’ll help you to understand more fully why the biblical author quoted that verse.

Context matters. This is basic Bible study at its best, and I commend it to you.

Check it out!

The New Testament Uses the Old Testament

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scrollThe apostle Paul provoked an uproar up and down the Roman empire with a simple, two-point message:

  1. The Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead

  2. The Messiah is Jesus

He staked these claims in the soil of Scripture.  Luke tells of his stint in Thessalonica:

And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.’ (Acts 17:2-3, ESV)

The citizens of Berea wouldn’t take it on Paul’s word alone.  They had to see it for themselves:

Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica [who ended up attacking both Paul and his message]; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. (Acts 17:11)

Paul wasn’t the only one to use this method of reasoning.  Every apostle used the Old Testament to explain this great message about Jesus, and many of them wrote it down for us in the New Testament.  Some authors were more explicit in their use of the Old Testament than others.  And we can learn much from them about how to read the Old Testament ourselves.

To that end, I’ve compiled a few lists to help launch you into the delightful world of intertestamental hermeneutics (a big phrase that simply means “how the New Testament authors understood the Old Testament”).

These lists won’t give you a complete understanding of the Old Testament and how it speaks of Jesus.  But they will direct you to the passages that most explicitly influenced the apostles’ thinking.  May they help you see Jesus more clearly.

Top 10 OT books quoted in NT

10 OT books never quoted in NT

Top 13 OT chapters quoted in NT

Top 11 OT verses quoted in NT

Top 10 NT books that quote OT passages

10 NT books that don’t quote the OT

Now go, you Berean, and see if these things are so. Check out the Resources page for an exhaustive list of NT quotations of the OT.

Question: What do you think about how the NT authors used the OT?

An Exhaustive List of Old Testament Quotations

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quotation-marksEarlier this year, I ran a series of posts analyzing the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament. I listed which Old Testament books and chapters and verses were quoted most often. I listed which New Testament books did the most quoting. I drew these lists from my own exhaustive collection of New Testament quotations of the Old Testament.

Much more analysis could be done, so I’m happy to give you my raw data. This data might help you study overarching principles of interpretation. Or it might help you to see if the Old Testament book you’re studying is quoted anywhere in the New Testament. Perhaps you’ll find even more uses for it.

In both my posts and on the spreadsheet, I’ve tried to be clear about my assumptions and approach. May this data prove useful in your study of God’s Knowable Word.

I’ve created a new Resources page, with this spreadsheet as the first item. Check it out!

What other resources would you find helpful for your Bible study?

 

10 NT Books that Don’t Quote the OT

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I recently finished a read-through of the Bible, during which I kept track of every instance the New Testament quotes an Old Testament passage.

Photo Credit: Kladcat (2012), shared under a Creative Commons Attribution License

Photo Credit: Kladcat (2012), shared under a Creative Commons Attribution License

I counted only direct, explicit quotations, such as those introduced with “it is written,” or “as it says in the Law of Moses.”  I gave some leniency, allowing clear quotations on the list even if introduced by a mere “for.”

I did not include any mere allusions or references to people or events in the Old Testament.  I don’t think such allusions are unimportant; I just think they can be difficult to measure.  For example, Matthew 2:23, NASB looks, smells, and tastes like a quote.  It has quotation marks (at least in most English versions other than the ESV).  It even references “what was spoken through the prophets.”  You can’t really get a better introductory formula than that.  But which passage is Matthew quoting?  Search me.  No-one seems to know.  It’s more likely that Matthew is referring to the principle of a low-born, humble Messiah than to any specific passage.  So, I excluded Matt 2:23 from the list.  One unfortunate result is that books like 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation, which contain Old Testament allusions in almost every verse, are almost completely absent from the list.

This list has 10 NT books that don’t ever explicitly quote the OT.  I’m not suggesting that these books don’t reference the OT or care about it.  I’m not suggesting that you can understand these books without understanding the OT.  I’m simply observing that the authors of these books didn’t explicitly quote specific verses to support their points.

Of all the lists I’ve posted so far, I’m least convinced that this one has much practical usefulness.  These books are full of allusions to the OT, even though they don’t explicitly quote it.  But, I’m giving you the list more for the sake of closure than anything else.

  1. Philippians

  2. Colossians

  3. 1 Thessalonians

  4. 2 Thessalonians

  5. Titus

  6. Philemon

  7. 1 John

  8. 2 John

  9. 3 John

  10. Revelation

Now you can’t accuse me of ever withholding information. For the raw data listing every quotation, see the resources page.

Update February 2019: I removed 2 Timothy from this list and changed the title of the post from “11 Books” to “10 Books,” because I’ve become convinced that, in 2 Timothy 2:19, Paul is quoting, albeit loosely, not from some early Christian sayings but from Numbers 16:5 and Numbers 16:26. I’ve also made the addition to the master spreadsheet.

Top 10 NT Books that Quote OT Passages

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I recently finished a read-through of the Bible, during which I kept track of every instance the New Testament quotes an Old Testament passage.

I counted only direct, explicit quotations, such as those introduced with “it is written,” or “as it says in the Law of Moses.” I gave some leniency, allowing clear quotations on the list even if introduced by a mere “for.”

I did not include any mere allusions or references to people or events in the Old Testament. I don’t think such allusions are unimportant; I just think they can be difficult to measure. For example, when Jesus is called “Son of Man,” is that an allusion to Daniel 7:13, to Psalm 8:4, or to Ezekiel 2:1, 3, 6, 8, etc? Most likely, the answer is “all of them,” but Bible interpreters disagree. Therefore, I left such unclear examples off the list altogether. One unfortunate result is that books like 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation, which contain Old Testament allusions in almost every verse, are almost completely absent from the list.

This list has the top 10 NT books that quote the OT (click here for other lists). Which books assume or expect a greater knowledge of the Old Testament? Which books require much more flipping back and forth to make sure we get the point? Which books had in mind an audience that would be comfortable with such use of the Old Testament?

After each entry, I include the number of times that book quotes an OT passage.

  1. Romans (58 quotes)

  2. Matthew (45)

  3. Hebrews (42)

  4. Acts (27)

  5. Galatians (20)

  6. 1 Corinthians (20)

  7. Luke (19)

  8. Mark (18)

  9. John (17)

  10. 1 Peter (8)

If a passage quotes two parallel Old Testament passages simultaneously, I counted it as two quotes. For example, Hebrews 1:5b simultaneously quotes 2 Samuel 7:14 and 1 Chronicles 17:13.

Frankly, I’m astonished that Romans, a book with only 16 chapters, tops the list. I don’t think I would have guessed it before I counted up the references.

Matthew and Hebrews are not much of a surprise, as they are considered some of the most “Jewish” books of the New Testament (along with James, which is too short to have many quotes). You can see there’s a large reduction in the number of references after those top three books.

All four Gospels are on this top 10 list. It’s possible that it’s mostly because they’re some of the longest books in the NT. But I think it’s also true that we simply will not understand Jesus’ person and work unless we understand him in light of the Old Testament. God has spoken in the whole Bible, and Jesus is the climax (Heb 1:1-4). For the raw data listing every quotation, see the resources page.

What else strikes you about this list?