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Updated: May 31, 2025
A brave company had set forth with him. Eight thousand Jews had been ready to leave comfort, luxury, and affluence behind, that they might go to the desolate city, and endeavour to stir up its people to energy and life. One of the 8,000 who went with Ezra was Nehemiah's brother, Hanani.
For if all the historical books were arranged chronologically, Nehemiah's book would come the very last in the series. Matthew takes up the pen and writes an account of the birth of the expected Messiah. Matthew there is an interval of 400 years, years which were full of interest in Jewish history, but of which we are told nothing in the Bible story.
This last chapter of his book is but a sad close for a record which began with such high hope, and tells of such strenuous, self-sacrificing effort. The last page of many a reformer's history has been, like Nehemiah's, a sad account of efforts to stem the ebbing tide of enthusiasm and the flowing tide of worldliness.
It is the list of all those who responded to Nehemiah's appeal, and who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. In Neh. iii. we have a list of their names, not one is omitted. There those names have stood for 2000 years; there they will stand to the end of time.
But now here is a man come direct from the court at Shushan, with letters from their royal master in his hand, and with orders to rebuild and fortify Jerusalem. From that moment Sanballat and his friends became Nehemiah's bitter enemies, determined to thwart and to oppose him to the utmost of their power. At length the wearisome journey is over, and Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem.
Nehemiah's next step was to appoint two men to superintend these guards, and to be responsible to him for the safety of the city. At any moment he might be recalled to Persia, at any moment he might have to leave his important work in Jerusalem, that he might stand again as cup-bearer behind the king's chair.
If Meshullam's name is honourably mentioned here as one of the builders of Jerusalem, we shall find it very differently mentioned as we go on with Nehemiah's story. Passing these three men, we come to a part of the wall which is being built by the inhabitants of Tekoa, a small village not far from Jerusalem, whence came the wise woman whom Joab sent to King David.
We are not half awake, we are not half careful enough; let us walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Let us, whenever we have been tempted to any inconsistency, be able to take up Nehemiah's brave noble words, 'So did not I, because of the fear of God.
The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old horse would desist from twisting his head backward in surprise, and start at last of his own motion, dragging the plough, the share still unanchored in the ground, half across the field before he could be stopped.
And yet all deep religion ought to be joyful, and all strong religion assuredly will be so. Here, in the incident before us, there has come a time in Nehemiah's great enterprise, when the law, long forgotten, long broken by the captives, is now to be established again as the rule of the newly-founded commonwealth.
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