Israel’s Vow

By Barnabas Piper

Scripture Reading: Nehemiah 9:38, Nehemiah 10:1-39, Zechariah 10:6-12, Romans 6:16-19

We generally think of repentance in individual terms: I turn from my sin to follow God’s way. But what we see in Nehemiah 10 is corporate repentance; the whole people of God rejecting their rebellion and turning back to God’s way. This is hard for many of us in modern Western cultures to fathom because we don’t live as part of a nation that was formed and called by God, ruled by God, had rejected God, and thus were homeless and identityless apart from God. But when the people of Israel turned back to God’s law with open arms and open hearts, it wasn’t just a moral shift or an effort at improvement. It was relational restoration, spiritual renewal, and a homecoming.

The leaders, both spiritual and civic, put their names—and staked their lives—on a written legal commitment before God to keep His law. This wasn’t a case of distant rulers making legislative decisions on behalf of the people; these were fellow exiles and members of the people. They were fathers and brothers and uncles to the people. Their commitment wasn’t just the ratifying of a law but the submitting of hearts. And the people were with them in their binding agreement: “Everyone who is able to understand…commit themselves with a sworn oath to follow the law of God given through God’s servant Moses and to obey carefully all the commands, ordinances, and statutes of the LORD our Lord” (Nehemiah 10:28–29).

In taking this corporate step of repentance, the people were again binding themselves to God as “slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:19), to serve Him and Him alone as their God. They were turning back to the covenant God had made with Israel, the one He had never broken or abandoned. The Lord had promised, “I will restore them because I have compassion on them, and they will be as though I had never rejected them. For I am the Lord their God, and I will answer them” (Zechariah 10:6). Only then could Israel receive those blessings.

While God did restore Israel to their home—a rebuilt temple and walls around Jerusalem—this wasn’t the ultimate fulfillment of God’s prophecy. Neither was the Old Testament law the ultimate means of salvation. Both pointed forward to the restoration and salvation that would come through Christ. Through the work of Christ people are restored to a true relationship with God and find a true and lasting home. When we repent and turn to Christ we are committing ourselves to work he has done for us to save, not work we must do in order to be saved.

Written by Barnabas Piper