And conspired all of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder it.
All Commentaries on Nehemiah 4:8 Go To Nehemiah 4
Bede
AD 735
And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden step that he had made to speak upon, and so on until it is said, And Ezra opened the book before all the people, for he was standing out above all the people.7 The book of Chronicles appears to mention this place where it is said that Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord, facing all the multitude of Israel, and he stretched forth his hands. For Solomon had made a bronze platform and had set it in the midst of the basilica, and it was five cubits long and five cubits broad and three cubits high. And he stood upon it.1 For 'in the midst of the basilica' means in the midst of the courtyard of the priests, which surrounded the greater basilica of the exterior courts on every side of the temple, about which it is written earlier in the same book, he made the courtyard of the priests, and a great basilica.2 But Solomon, being a king, made a bronze platform, whereas Ezra, as a man of lesser power, built a wooden step to speak upon, /1125/ just as Solomon or Moses also made the altar of holocaust out of bronze3 and the descendants of the exiles replaced it with a stone one. But it should not be supposed that the wooden step holds a less perfect mystery than the bronze scaffold. For, as has often been said, just as bronze, for the length of time that it endures or for the sweetness of its sound, corresponds to the divine sacraments which fail with no passing of the ages and their sound has gone out into all the earth,4 in the same way wood too fits most aptly with these same sacraments on account of the trophy of the Lord's passion. The pontifex,5 therefore, stands out above all the people when he who receives the rank of teacher rises above the activity of the crowd by the merit of a more perfect life; but he stands on a wooden step that he had made to speak upon when he makes himself higher than the rest through exceptional imitation of the Lord's passion. Hence he deservedly obtains the trust to preach God's word freely; for he who disdains to imitate the Lord's passion in his own modest way has not yet mounted the wooden step from where he can stand above the weak, and for that reason it is necessary that such a scribe must preach the precepts of God in trepidation, fearing or blushing to propose that others must do what he has failed to do himself. And so it is aptly added in what follows:
