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"Ananias" keeps still and winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they take in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow. If you meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears "Rab-shakeh," an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out what good sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not." No, no, keep your temper.
What had brought Hanani back from Jerusalem we are not told; he may have wished once more to see his old father Hachaliah; but we can well imagine the joy with which he would be welcomed by all, and not the least by his brother Nehemiah. As they walk together through Shushan to the palace, the Rab-shakeh asks anxiously after Jerusalem. Has Ezra's work been successful? How are matters progressing?
But here is Nehemiah the Rab-shakeh, living in a heathen palace, in the midst of a wicked court, surrounded by drunkenness, sensuality, and all that is vile and impure, breathing in the very atmosphere of sin, yet we find him a plant of the Lord, pure as the azalea, a man of faith, a man of prayer, a holy man of God.
If I live in the atmosphere of prayer, then I am alive unto God; if, on the other hand, I feel prayer a weariness, and know not what it is for my heart to hold unseen intercourse with my Lord, then indeed I am dead in sin, having no breath, and I have consequently no life. Nehemiah, the great Rab-shakeh, was a living soul, for he loved to pray.
The great Rab-shakeh, magnificently attired in all the brilliancy of Oriental costume, is walking towards the city gate. Above him stretches the deep blue sky of the East, about and around him stream the warm rays of the sun. It is the month of December, yet no cold biting wind meets him, and he needs no warm wraps to shield him from the frost or snow.
Turning to the Rab-shakeh he asks: 'Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. 'Then, says Nehemiah, 'I was very sore afraid. It is no wonder that he was alarmed, for it was actually a crime, proscribed by law, for any one to look sad or depressed in the presence of a Persian king.
"Ananias" keeps still and winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they take in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow. If you meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears "Rab-shakeh," an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out what good sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not." No, no, keep your temper.
The city through which the Rab-shakeh walks is very beautiful; it is the capital of the kingdom of Persia. Its name is Shushan, the City of Lilies, and it is so called from the fields of sweet-scented iris flowers which surround it.
Probably no one there knew when he was coming, or whether he was coming at all. When Nehemiah left the city he possibly had no idea that he would be allowed to return, but expected that his royal master would again require his services as Rab-shakeh in the palace of Shushan; nor was it likely that any news had reached the city of the permission given him to return.
Before leaving his room that morning, he knelt down, and put himself and his cause in the Lord's hands, Neh. i. 11. Then, attired in his official dress, the Rab-shakeh sets forth for the state apartments of the palace. The central building of that magnificent pile in which the king held court was very fine and imposing, as may be seen to-day from the extensive ruins of Shushan.
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