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Has it ever struck you that the culmination of the wall of Jerusalem going up in Nehemiah 12 is a great music procession (12.27-43)?

Surely this is intended as a reversal of the wall of Jericho going down in response to a great music procession.

This correspondence is drawn closer by the fact that the procession in Nehemiah comes at the dedication of the wall. To my knowledge, no city or its walls had been dedicated (consecrated) before. That is a form of setting apart (sanctifying to Yahweh’s use).

Or rather, one city had been so set apart previously.

Jericho.

The other cities of Canaan were given to Israel to plunder for themselves, but Jericho was the “firstborn,” as it were, set apart for God. The city itself became a sort of ascension offering (otherwise known as a burnt offering); it was burned along with everything in it (Josh 6.24), with the exception of the silver, gold and vessels of metal, which were put into Yahweh’s treasury. Jericho was devoted (a city of cherem, sometimes translated along the lines of “accursed,” but the fundamental meaning is devotion) to Yahweh, which was why Achan’s theft of its treasures was dealt with so severely. (And also, incidentally, why his punishment took the specific form it did in Josh 7.25. Just as Jericho was “stoned” with its own walls and burned with fire, so Achan and his family, who had apparently been in collusion with him, were stoned with stones and burned with fire. By laying hold of the devoted things, the things of cherem, Achan also became cherem.)

Leithart points out that in Nehemiah 12, the whole city of Jerusalem has become “the house of God” (see 12.40). This is confirmed by the anomalous dedication (anomalous in the sense that this was normally something done to the temple or its vessels, not to a city or its walls), as well as by the fact that the returnees from Babylon are chosen by lot to be tithed to God to live in Jerusalem (Neh 11.1-2).

I believe there is a strong correspondence between that “tithing” event and the choice of the Levites to serve as the firstborn in Numbers 3.40-45. (Note again that the “firstborn” in Numbers 3 are set over against the destroyed firstborn of Egypt; a further suggestion that we are on the right track in seeing the chosen in Nehemiah as being set over against the destroyed “devoted” population of Jericho.)

I’m sure that it would be fruitful to reflect further upon this correspondence between Jericho’s destruction and Jerusalem’s rebuilding….