Nehemiah 8:8

So they read in the book,.... Ezra and those with him; he first began to read and expound, and when weary they relieved him, and did the same: in the law of God distinctly; which was the book they

So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading. Gave the sense.

They read, to wit, Ezra and his companions successively or severally. Gave the sense; i.e. the meaning of the Hebrew words, which they expounded in the common language. Caused them to understand the reading, i.e. that which they read, to wit, the Holy Scripture; the action being put for the object, as vision is oft put for the thing seen, and hearing for the thing heard, and fear for the thing feared. So they gave them both a translation of the Hebrew words into the Chaldee, and an exposition of the things contained in them, and of the duty incumbent upon the people by virtue of them, the declaration whereof was a great part of the priest’ s work, .

Nehemiah 8:8 So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused [them] to understand the reading.Ver. 8. So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly] Exposite, clare, vel cum expositione (Explanate, Junius). They read aloud, and so treatably and plainly, that all might know what they read. Some stumble over the chapter so fast that few are little the better. And gave the sense] viz. By comparing place with place, and interpreting one Scripture by another. See the like done by St Paul at Damascus, Acts 9:22; he laid one text to another (ουμβιβαζων), as artificers do the several pieces of their work, that they may perfectly agree the one with the other. Causing the people to understand the reading] Dabant intelligentiam per scripturam ipsam, They gave the meaning though the scriptures themselves. so Tremellias rendereth it. Of the law it may be said, Et latet, et lucet. Both obscure and clear. The prophets are as so many expositors and explainers thereof; they do excellently unfold and draw out that arras which was folded together before; they give us Moses unveiled. Search the Scriptures, therefore, and compare them. Parallel texts, like glasses, set one against another, do cast a mutual light; like the sun, the Scriptures show other things, and themselves too.

(8) Gave the sense.—They expounded obscurer passages, and in doing so naturally translated into the vernacular Aramaic dialect. Caused them to understand the reading.—This simply explains the former: they expounded as they read.

Verse 8. So they read in the book] For an explanation of this verse, see the observations at the end of the chapter. See Clarke on Ne 8:17.

8. So they read] R.V. And they read. The account does not make it clear, whether the Levites were reading at the same time as Ezra, groups being gathered round the different readers, or whether, as we should rather infer, there was one reader who at the first was Ezra himself, and afterward chosen Levites who in succession took his place and relieved him. distinctly] R.V. marg. ‘Or, with an interpretation’. On the word see note on Ezra 4:18. The rendering of the R.V. marg. is sometimes based on the erroneous supposition that the Jews had returned from Babylon speaking Chaldee or Aramaic, and that in consequence the Hebrew of ‘the Law’ had to be ‘interpreted’ in the sense of ‘translated.’ This would have been necessary in much later times. But in the time of Nehemiah, if we may judge from the writings of Nehemiah and Malachi, the people’s dialect had not yet undergone the change, which may have begun very soon afterwards. The common misapprehension of our verse arises from the erroneous impression that Chaldee was the language of the ‘Chaldeans’ spoken in Babylon and there acquired by the Jews. But in Babylon and Babylonia the spoken language was ‘Assyrian,’ another branch of the Semitic family. The ‘Chaldee’ of the Bible is the Aramaic or North Semitic dialect. See Introduction, and cf. note on Nehemiah 13:24. The word in the original occurs in Numbers 15:34, ‘it had not been declared (i.e. made clear) what should be done unto him.’ The rendering ‘distinctly’ means with clearness and precision, for which careful study was required. Some understand ‘with an interpretation’ in the sense of ‘with exposition;’ while the possibility of this explanation may be admitted, it is open to the objection that it anticipates the substance of the clause which immediately follows. distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand] R.V. distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood. Marg. as A.V. and caused, &c. The R.V. gives the right idea of the verse, which consists of two clauses, the one describing the clearness of the public reading, the other the parenthetic comment introduced for the sake of explaining the text. ‘gave the sense:’ a phrase occurring only here in the O.T. The clause ‘so that they understood’ is subordinate to, denoting the result of, the previous words ‘gave the sense.’ ‘so that they understood the reading,’ so that they understood what was being read. The word for ‘the reading’ ‘hammiq’ra’ here used of the public reading, became in later times a technical Rabbinic word for ‘Scripture.’ The ancient versions treat the words as an independent clause, ‘And the people understood the reading,’ (LXX. καὶσυνῆκενὁλαὸςἐντῇἀναγνώσει. Vulg. ‘et intellexerunt cum legeretur,’) which gives a good sense, but misses the interdependence of the two sentences. It is a mistake to suppose that the R.V. rendering of the two clauses is tautological. The Levites ‘gave the sense,’ not mechanically, but so that the people grasped its meaning.

Gave the sense - Either by rendering the Hebrew into the Aramaic dialect, or perhaps simply by explaining obscure words or passages.

8. In the book in the law — An emphatic intimation that the book from which they read was no other than the law of God.