Caused Them To Understand the Reading

In this week’s Come, Follow Me lesson, we learn about Nehemiah and Ezra who were leaders in Jerusalem after the Jews had gone back to rebuild the city and the temple. One of the most important things they did was to help the people understand the scriptures so that they could worship properly and remember the Lord. Ezra led to them in the streets for seven days, and I love this description: “[They] caused the people to understand the law: and the people stood in their place. So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:7-8). It wasn’t enough just to read the scriptures to the people; these leaders made sure that they explained the sense of the passages and caused the people to understand what they were reading. Surely for us it is important not just to read some quantity in the scriptures but also to understand what the scriptures teach us about the Lord and His gospel. This reminds me of the story of Philip in the New Testament. An angel of the Lord came to him saying, “Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.” So Philip went that direction and he found a man from Ethiopia. The man was “sitting in his chariot” reading the book of Isaiah. Philip went over to him and heard what he was reading. He asked, “Understandest thou what thou readest?” I love the man’s honest answer: “How can I, except some man should guide me?” Sometimes the scriptures are hard to understand and we need help to be guided in them. So Philip got up in the chariot and sat with the man, teaching him about Jesus and how the passage in Isaiah he was reading (Isaiah 53) was a prophecy of the Savior. Again, the story reminds us that as we read the scriptures we should seek for understanding, and that may mean that we need help from others to guide us.    

In the next chapter in Nehemiah, some of the leaders gave a prayer to the Lord in which they recounted what He had done for them. In it they said, “Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee…. And didst see the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heardest their cry by the Red sea; And shewedst signs and wonders upon Pharaoh, and on all his servants, and on all the people of his land: for thou knewest that they dealt proudly against them. So didst thou get thee a name, as it is this day. And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land; and their persecutors thou threwest into the deeps, as a stone into the mighty waters. Moreover thou leddest them in the day by a cloudy pillar; and in the night by a pillar of fire, to give them light in the way wherein they should go. And gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst” (Nehemiah 9:6-13). Here they recounted the miracles that the Lord had done for the children of Israel, including their miraculous escape from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, leading them in a pillar of fire, giving them manna in the wilderness, and giving them water from a rock. This highlights that one of the reasons we read the scriptures is to understand what the Lord has done for previous generations. As we learn of the miracles He has done for them, we can develop faith that He will likewise help us in our individual lives. In his title page of the Book of Mormon, Moroni highlighted that one of the purposes of the book was “to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers.” As we learn of the great things that the Lord has done for others in the scriptures, we can develop faith that “Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations”—including us.