The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum In Nehemiah 3

This may be too technical, but these questions came to my mind when reading the chapter.

What does 'the official of half the district of Jerusalem' refer? What is a district? What is a half district? What is the official?

Elsewhere the chapter speaks of other half districts. Were the half districts of Jerusalem inside the wall, and the other half districts outside the wall?

Finally, how was these areas and governing decided upon and carried out? At one time was Zerabbabel the head governor of all the area? Who did Nehemiah report to locally?

What makes it difficult for me is that you are not using a translation I am familiar with. With that in mind, I'll try and answer your question by assuming "official" is translated "ruler" in my Formal Equivalent translations, e.g., KJV and ASV. And, you didn't give any specific verses to which you have formed your question(s).

1. The 'official/ruler' over 'half the district of Jerusalem', e.g., in verse 9 is someone who was given charge of the rebuilding of the wall, gates, etc., of the city, i.e. of the district of country belonging to Jerusalem (compare v. 19 with v. 15, where Mizpah and the district of Mizpah are distinguished).

2. What ever the 'half districts' were exactly, what should probably be understood is that the rebuilding project consisted of repairing those parts of the city which were destroyed or damaged by the Chaldeans. There may have been parts which were not damaged and thus needed no repair. Secondly, it is doubtful that the restoration did not involve the entire city as it was originally built, i.e., the renovated city was smaller than the original and thus there were sections which would have been located outside of the wall. Why? If a portion of the former city had been left outside the new wall, the gate of Ephraim would have been displaced, and must have been rebuilt elsewhere in a position to the south of the old gate... thus making it highly improbable that this was the case.

Thanks, my SS teacher was reading from the ESV, and when I got home I re-read it using the NASB.

My assumption of their being only one district in Jerusalem is probably what got me off track. I assumed Jerusalem was one district making the two half districts described in the chapter (vv 9, 12) being the whole of Jerusalem. Then other verses in the chapters spoke of other half districts and across from their houses.

I was making too much of the use of district as I was thinking of it as a governing region, not just a location name.