This week we are studying Chapter 9 when the people stopped feasting and began fasting. Although Chapter 9 is a continuation of the previous chapter’s theme of Torah revival, the national mood shifted from joy to sadness.
When the High Holiday period ended on the 22nd of the month, the people gathered two days later for another general assembly in Jerusalem. This was their third public reading of the Torah in a month.
Ezra’s first public reading of the laws and statutes made the congregants cry spontaneously as they realized how far they had strayed from God’s calling (8:9). Although the scriptures stirred up a wellspring of emotion, Nehemiah and Ezra told the people to lock it up and swallow the lump in their throat, just maybe not in those words. They needed to put off any display of sadness because of the celebratory nature of the holiday season. Like Ecclesiastes says, there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance” (Eccl. 3:4).
