And on the second day were gathered together the heads of the fathers' houses of all the people, the priests, and the Levites, unto Ezra the scribe, even to understand the words of the law.
All Commentaries on Nehemiah 8:13 Go To Nehemiah 8
Bede
AD 735
And I cast out the vessels of the house of Tobiah from the storeroom. And I gave orders and they purified the storerooms, and then I brought back there the vessels of the house of God, the sacrifice, and the incense. You also, whatever infidelity and uncleanness you discover among the faithful, immediately cast it out so that after the hearts of believers (which are the Lord's storerooms, since they are full of the riches of the virtues), have been purified, the vessels of the Lord may be brought in - that is to say, those same hearts that just before were vessels of error through sin may again become vessels of the Lord through correction, and there let the sacrifice of good works and the incense of pure prayer be found where before there was a den of thieves.1 But the vessels of Tobiah the Ammonite are also cast out from the temple storeroom, and God's vessels as well as the sacrifice and the incense are returned to that place by those who, after they have excommunicated or anathematized heretics and false catholics and expelled them from the Church, substitute in their place catholic servants of Christ such as may serve him with faithful deeds and prayers. Clearly, we ought to compare this zeal of Nehemiah to that of the Lord Savior when, finding vendors and buyers in the temple, he made a whip from cords and drove them all outside.2 Nehemiah, in this as in his other undertakings, aptly conveyed a type of the true Consoler and Cleanser.
