I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

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

    There were two men with political power in the area around Jerusalem who opposed Nehemiah and his rebuilding of the wall. Yesterday, I offered a theory for their opposition. Whether that theory was correct, or there was some other reason they opposed Nehemiah, it is clear that they considered him a threat to their power and wealth. In this passage they belittled the effectiveness of the wall which the residents of Jerusalem were building, at least in part, as an effort to discourage those doing the building. Furthermore, they planned an assault to disrupt the work on the wall. However, when Nehemiah learned of the planned assault he organized a defense of the city. From the description it seems that Nehemiah did not really believe that the planned defense would prevent the assault. But, if his enemies had launched their planned attack, Nehemiah’s defensive planning would have resulted in evidence that his enemies were behind the attack. Nehemiah would have been able to present such evidence to the king of Persia, who was known to hold him in high esteem. Knowing this, his enemies next attempt was to get him to come to a place where they could ambush him. When this plan also failed, they bribed someone Nehemiah considered a friend to convince Nehemiah that he needed to protect himself while leaving the common man at risk. Nehemiah rejected that advice as well. Repeatedly, Nehemiah showed himself to be a true leader of the people.

    In the middle of the accounts about how Nehemiah’s enemies attempted to disrupt his work, we have a concrete example of how Nehemiah served the people rather than the other way around. When Nehemiah learned that some of the Jews were suffering economic hardship while others were doing well, with the latter doing well at the expense of the former, he was furious. He confronted them with the fact that they were taking part in the efforts to buy out of slavery Jews everywhere, while at the same time they were causing other Jews to be sold into slavery. Nehemiah admitted that he, his brothers, and his servants had been profiting by loaning money at interest to the poor. However, he was going to stop that practice and restore the profit he had made. He thus shamed the others among the elites into doing the same. It is worth noting that Nehemiah did not use his power as governor to get the other nobles to stop mistreating the poor. Instead he shamed them into agreeing to do so by his own example.