People of the Book

The book of Ezra-Nehemiah tells the story of the Israelites return from the Exile, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the commitment of the community to be a "people of the Book."

It details how Israel vowed to break the cycle of disobedience that brought about the Exile, by focusing on Torah.

Torah is the name of the first five books of the Bible and contains the 613 commandments (Hb. mitzvot) Yahweh gave to Israel. These laws outlined the way Israel was to live in order to be blessed by God and in turn be a blessing to the whole world (Gen 12).

Among the many laws, the Israelites were called to love each other, to care for the immigrants living among them, and to worship only one God. This set them apart as minorities in a polytheistic world that did not live by such ideals.

Part of being a "people of the Book" was understanding how the Book applied to their lives. This was especially challenging because it had been over 700 years since the Torah was given. So we read in Neh 8.8 that, "they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that people understood the reading."

We are called to be a "people of the Book" as well; people who center our lives around the ideas and events of Scripture.

So we, living thousands of years after the Bible was written, have to wrestle with the text to interpret and apply it. But this just may be what it means to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and there is no greater mitzvot than that! 

For a couple interesting examples of the Bible interpreting the Bible, see Ex 21.2-11 vs. Deut 15.12-18, as well as this post.