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.

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

Before I get into my study of today’s passage I want to make note of something I only really became aware of after I started writing these blogs:  Nehemiah did not come to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls which had been destroyed during the Babylonian conquest which immediately preceded the Exile.  Rather, he was rebuilding the walls which had originally been built by those who first returned under Cyrus.   So, when Nehemiah got the Jew started rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, their enemies, Sanballat and Tobiah the Ammonite, ridiculed them for even trying to rebuild the walls.  As we read on we realize that part of the reason Sanballat and Tobiah thought the rebuilding effort was a joke was because previous governors of Jerusalem(I am unsure what the correct title was for Nehemiah and his predecessors) were corrupt.    In fact, we even see that a significant number of the Jewish leaders with whom Nehemiah had to work were corrupt, or on the side of Tobiah and Sanballat for other reasons.  n any case, Nehemiah encouraged the workers who were building the wall and they continued to work hard at it.  This led Tobiah and Sanballat to plot, or perhaps, just plant the rumor that they were plotting, to attack the builders when and where they were unprepared.  Nehemiah met this threat by making sure the men who had come with him could be clearly seen to be prepared to repel attackers, and got the rest of those working on the wall to do likewise.

In the middle of today’s passage, which is mostly about the attempts to prevent the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls and how Nehemiah countered those attempts, we have a bit where Nehemiah learns that the elites of Jerusalem, including himself, were oppressing their fellow Jews who were poor.  Initially, it seems like a separate issue from Nehemiah’s efforts to get Jerusalem rebuilt and functioning.  However, I realized today that this bit in the middle explains why Nehemiah was successful in building the walls while his predecessors had left them in ruins.  When Nehemiah realized that he was getting rich off of the misfortune of others, he immediately changed his business practices and convinced the others who were doing likewise to follow his example.  By behaving in this manner, Nehemiah showed the people that rebuilding the walls was not a vanity project for Nehemiah.  He wanted to rebuild the walls because he cared about the protection this would offer the people who could not afford armed guards.  Nehemiah pushed rebuilding the walls because he believed it was in everyone’s best interest to do so.  Which led those who liked things the way they were, because they profited from the vulnerability of others, to attempt to assassinate Nehemiah, or failing that to make him look like he put his interests ahead of those of everyone else.  Despite having been appointed by the king of Persia to govern Jerusalem, and being the leader who could inspire the people to restore it to being a major city, Nehemiah refused to act like he thought he was more important than anyone else.  We should seek  to follow Nehemiah’s example…and its flip side, we should refuse to view ourselves as less important than anyone else.

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

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

I was going to write a completely different blog today than what I am writing now, but I found myself getting down into the weeds of the passage, writing about things you can read for yourself.  Then it struck me that the reason we read this book is because Nehemiah refused to back down.  When the people working on the wall were beginning to get overwhelmed by the effort, were beginning to feel that they weren’t getting anywhere with the project, Nehemiah stood up and laid out a plan.  And he did not just give them a plan, he put his back into the plan and worked alongside of them.  When people complained to Nehemiah about the rich oppressing them, he did not point the finger at other people and say that they needed to change their ways.  No, when he asked the rich to do more to help the poor, he asked them to follow his example, and he did more than he asked anyone else to do.  When he was personally threatened, he refused to take a defensive position not available to the common people because he was more important to the cause then anyone else.  He was, but he refused to let that justify giving himself special privileges.

I have written all of the above, and I think it is a pretty fair reading of the passage, but it fails to capture the thoughts behind it.  I have respect for how Nehemiah behaved as a leader of the people, but I cannot quite get it put into words.

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

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

I see a connection between what was going on with the attempts by outsiders to intimidate the Returned Exiles into giving up on rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls and the exploitation of the poorer Returned Exiles by those who were wealthier.  The outsiders were discouraging the work on the wall on purpose, but the wealthy Returned Exiles were doing so because they thought more about their self-interest than the interest of the people as a whole.  At least some of the wealthy had not realized the impact their actions were having on their countrymen.   Even Nehemiah had been doing so, but when he realized the effect his actions were having on those less fortunate than himself he acted to change things and to recompense those whom he had previously exploited.  The willingness of Nehemiah, and others like him, to expend their resources to make the project come to fruition gave heart to those who only had their physical efforts to contribute.

I hope those of you reading this can see the spiritual lesson which I got from this passage and tried to convey in the above words.

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

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.

Understanding that the walls of Jerusalem had been rebuilt once already since the return from exile puts the reaction of Nehemiah’s enemies in context.  One begins to understand that they were taking advantage of the disrepair of Jerusalem for their own purposes.  They wanted Jerusalem to be in a state of disrepair in order to facilitate their own illegal activities.  Initially they tried to discourage the Jews from repairing the walls by deriding their work as inadequate.  When that failed, they planned to send “bandits” to attack the city, destroying the work which had been done.  However, Nehemiah received word of their plans and implemented a defensive strategy.  The passage does not make it clear why Nehemiah’s enemies did not follow through anyway, but I suspect that a successful attack on Nehemiah’s defenses would have revealed that the attackers were not just bandits…or perhaps, their forces WERE just bandits and thus not up to taking on a well prepared force of defenders.  With the failure of this strategy they attempted to lure Nehemiah to where they could ambush him by threatening to lie to the King of Persia about his intentions.  This failed.  Part of the reason this failed was because Nehemiah had clearly laid out his plans to the King of Persia before he left to come to Jerusalem.

In the middle of the above, Nehemiah discovered that the poor among the Jews were being exploited by the wealthy and thus being driven even further into poverty.  When he realized this was true, he called the elites from among the Jews together and demanded that they stop.  But, he did not exempt himself from liability.  Rather, he recognized how his own actions contributed to the exploitation of the poor, even though that was not his intention.  Overall the portion of the passage where Nehemiah worked with the elites among the Jews to stop the exploitation of their poorer neighbors also provides us with an example for all leaders.  The passage points out how Nehemiah did not take advantage of many of the perks of his position which would have allowed him to become more wealthy in ways someone else would not be able to do.  Those perks were intended to allow a man of less wealth than Nehemiah had to fulfill the duties of his office.  However, reading between the lines one realizes that most people in a position similar to Nehemiah’s used those perks to make themselves even more wealthy and powerful.