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

There are two things I want to look at in today’s passage.  The first thing I am going to write about comes in the middle of the passage.  While the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls was going on, something being done as a community project with everyone contributing as their abilities allowed, some of the less well-to-do and the poor complained to Nehemiah about the way the wealthy were getting wealthier at their expense.  When Nehemiah looked into it, he realized that they were right.  So, he called the elites together and demanded that they stop charging interest on loans to their fellow believers and that they refund the interest they had already collected (including returning the land which had secured some of the debt which had not been paid).  However, the key part of this demand by Nehemiah was his acknowledgement that he and his family had also been guilty of getting wealthy at the expense of the poor.  Nehemiah also refunded the interest he had collected and returned the lands which he had taken in lieu of repayment.  Nehemiah led by example.

When the enemies of the Jews heard that they were rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem, they were initially dismissive and ridiculed the effort.  The passage makes it clear that the ridicule was intended to discourage the Jews from continuing.   When the Jews continued to work, and made real progress, their enemies plotted to intervene with violence.  Nehemiah worked with the leaders to plan how they would protect themselves from such an attack.  The enemies continued to plot to attack the Jews, while making sure that the Jews knew about their plan.  The key here is that God’s people did not allow their fear to stop them from continuing to work.  When that failed, the Jews’ enemies tried to convince Nehemiah to meet with them some place where they could arrange to ambush him.  They went so far as to tell Nehemiah that the purpose of the meeting was to offer Nehemiah an opportunity to address rumors that Nehemiah was planning to revolt against the king of Persia.  And when that failed, they tried to discredit Nehemiah by scaring him into hiding from assassins.  Nehemiah refused to meet with the enemies of his people and he refused to hide from the threat against him.  So, while we need to prepare for the obstacles our enemies, God’s enemies, put in our path, we should not stop doing the work God has assigned to us.  We should not spend any time worrying about what our enemies are saying about us.  We should not spend any time worrying about what the enemies of God say about His followers.  And we should not hide from threats of violence.

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