I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Nehemiah 4-6.

When Nehemiah started construction work on the walls of Jerusalem, Sanballat and Tobiah were angered by the work and tried to discourage the workers.  Both Sanballat and Tobiah were officials of the Persian government and had seen Nehemiah’s letters from the King of Persia.  Neither Sanballat nor Tobiah had any official authority over Jerusalem.  However, both had unofficial interests there and their official positions had given them significant clout with those who had had authority in Jerusalem before Nehemiah’s arrival.  The passage does not spell it out, but I believe that at least part of their opposition to Nehemiah was related to his economic reforms.  An account of one of those economic reforms is sandwiched in between passages describing how Snaballat and Tobiah tried to intervene in Nehemiah’s governance of Jerusalem.

When Nehemiah became aware of how the wealthy were using their economic power to further impoverish the poor, he took action.  I am going to read between the lines a little bit here.  It appears that to one degree or another, the wealthy described here had built their wealth, at least in part, on the basis of being descended from those who had been taken into Exile from Jerusalem or the surrounding area.  However, they used that wealth to gain more wealth from other Returned Exiles who failed, for one reason or another, to capitalize on that heritage.  The wealthy were using their wealth to take advantage of the misfortunes of those who were not wealthy.  Rather than helping their coreligionists when they experienced misfortune, they were taking advantage of their misfortune.  The passage does not spell out the point I am about to make, but I think it fits what the passage does say.  The wealthy had gained their wealth because of favorable business arrangements which they were able to gain because they were members of the Returned Exiles.  However, rather than offer similar favorable arrangements with the less well off members of the Returned Exiles, they took advantage of their misfortunes to pad their own wealth.  Once they had gained their wealth they began to see themselves as having more in common with the corrupt officials of the surrounding peoples than with their fellow Jews. 

The corrupt officials among the surrounding peoples realized that they were going to be unable to stop Nehemiah from refortifying Jerusalem.  Further, he was convincing the Jews to close ranks and support each other rather than take part in the corrupt practices from which these officials profited.  So, they tried to set up a clandestine meeting with Nehemiah.  Again the passage does not say this, but the wording suggests to me that they implied an opportunity for Nehemiah to collaborate with them for both to profit.  Nehemiah, however, believed that they intended to ambush him if he went to the meeting.  When that failed, they attempted to blackmail Nehemiah with false accusations.  Again, the passage does not clearly say this, but the blackmail appears to have been, “Either cut a deal with us, or we will tell the King that you are plotting rebellion.”  That failed because Nehemiah was acting within the mandate he had received directly from the King of Persia and Nehemiah knew that it would take more than mere rumors and unsupported allegations to undermine his position.  They next attempted to take advantage of Nehemiah’s paranoia to make him an ineffective governor.  They hoped to get him to hide from assassins, which would have served the dual purposes of making him less aware of corruption among those under his authority and discredited him with his supporters for taking protective measures which were not available to them.