Week 18 Nehemiah 3
Nehemiah took the whole chapter to describe the rebuilding project. He named people’s names (the title of the chapter could be: Who Repaired What Section of the City Wall).
The gates of the city were handy reference-locator points to describe the wall-building assignments. Nehemiah described quite a few other city landmarks but I didn’t have time to worry about them. I focussed on the gates. There were ten of them: Sheep Fish Old Valley Refuse Fountain Water Horse East & Inspection Gates.
I found a bible map showing the city of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah. Right at the top was the Sheep Gate. Starting from there I worked my way counterclockwise around the wall. On the city map I found the Sheep Fish Valley Fountain Water Horse & East Gates.
The seven gates named on the bible map matched up with Nehemiah’s list. The difference was that Nehemiah named three extra gates: the Old Refuse & Inspection Gates. My bible map didn’t seem to have any idea about the location of those last three – didn’t even name them. And actually as far as that goes it looks like most of the gate-locations on the map were guess-work – all of them (except the Valley Gate) were followed by a question-mark – [?].
On a Scale of 1-10 Most Interesting & Useful Chapters in the OT chapter 3 will be in the lower half. But it’s still worth having.
Note: end of month reading report: 45% of the bible completed – so on April 30 that’s reassuring.