Nehemiah 10 · a question people ask
Were these promises the law of Moses, or new rules of their own?
The chapter has both kinds of words. They swore "to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God" (10:29), and twice it says "as it is written in the law" (10:34, 10:36). But for the yearly shekel it says "we made ordinances for ourselves" (10:32), and the wood offering was set by lots, "according to our fathers’ houses" (10:34). Several points sit beside laws of Moses with close words (the go-deeper Set beside the law lists them), but the chapter doesn't say which passages it has in mind. Its "third part of a shekel" (10:32) sits beside "half a shekel for an offering to the LORD" (Exodus 30:13). The text doesn't say how the two are related, and this study doesn't explain the difference or work anything out.
The verses
“joined with their brothers, their nobles, and entered into a curse and into an oath, to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord, and his ordinances and his statutes;”
“Also we made ordinances for ourselves, to charge ourselves yearly with the third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God:”
“We, the priests, the Levites, and the people, cast lots for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our fathers’ houses, at times appointed year by year, to burn on the LORD our God’s altar, as it is written in the law;”
“also the firstborn of our sons and of our livestock, as it is written in the law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks, to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God;”