�EHEMIAH 1 COMME�TARYEDITED BY GLE�� PEASE

I�TRODUCTIO�

PARKER, "The following material appeared at the end of �ehemiah in the printed edition:

�ehemiah

(Selected).

All that we know certainly concerning this eminent man is contained in the book which bears his name. His autobiography first finds him at Shushan [Ecbatana was the summer, Babylon the spring, and Persepolis the autumn residence of the kings of Persia. Susa was the principal palace], the winter residence of the kings of Persia, in high office as the cupbearer of King Artaxerxes Longimanus. The following note, summing up the achievements of this great and good governor, is from Smith"s Dictionary of the Bible, from which work we have selected the notes on pages227,235.

�ehemiah firmly repressed the exactions of the nobles and the usury of the rich, and rescued the poor Jews from spoliation and slavery. He refused to receive his lawful allowance as governor from the people, in consideration of their poverty, during the whole twelve years that he was in office, but kept at his own charge a table for one hundred and fifty Jews, at which any who returned from captivity were welcome. He made most careful provision for the maintenance of the ministering priests and Levites, and for the due and constant celebration of Divine worship. He insisted upon the sanctity of the precincts of the Temple being preserved inviolable, and peremptorily ejected the powerful Tobias from one of the chambers which Eliashib had assigned to him. He then replaced the stores and vessels which had been removed to make room for him, and appointed proper Levitical officers to superintend and distribute them. With no less firmness and impartiality he expelled from all sacred functions those of the high priest"s family who had contracted heathen marriages, and rebuked and punished those of the common people who had likewise intermarried with foreigners; and lastly, he provided for keeping holy the Sabbath day, which was shamefully profaned by many, both Jews and foreign merchants, and by his resolute conduct succeeded in repressing the lawless traffic on the day of rest.

Beyond the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes, to which �ehemiah"s own narrative leads us, we have no account of him whatever. �either had Josephus. For when he tells us that "when �ehemiah had done many other excellent things... he came to a great age and then died," he sufficiently indicates that he knew nothing more about

him. The most probable inference from the close of his own memoir, and the absence of any further tradition concerning him Isaiah , that he returned to Persia and died there.

Commentary On The Book Of �ehemiahBy Dr Peter Pett BA BD (Hons-London) DDIntroduction.

�ehemiah is the thrilling story of a man whom God had placed in a position of great authority in the Persian Empire, with a view to his achieving what had previously been forbidden, the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. It was no mean task. Judah was surrounded by powerful enemies who opposed the rebuilding, and who were willing to use any means in order to seek to prevent it, and, at their instigation, the king of Persia himself had, in the early part of his reign, issued an order for such work to cease. It would take a man of God of great influence and tact to reverse the situation. And such was �ehemiah.

�ehemiah is revealed as discreet and fearless, as well as being a brilliant organiser, demonstrating by his achievements that he had the capacity to win men to fall into line with his, and God’s purposes. �ot all the Jews in Judah welcomed his arrival, but his abilities under God are brought out by the way that he persuades almost all to assist him in the work regardless of their own loyalties.

But his vision was greater than that. He saw himself as establishing the eschatalogical Jerusalem promised by the prophets, ‘the holy city’ of Isaiah 52:10. And from �ehemiah 11:1 onwards we have a description of that achievement, commencing with the repopulation of Jerusalem with Jews from the new Israel; the guarantee that the worship of Jerusalem would be true, being founded on priests and Levites whose genealogies could be determined,; the celebrations that greeted the building of the wall that made all this possible; and the careful activity of �ehemiah in ensuring the purity of the city. Like Ezra, �ehemiah ends with a description of the putting away of idolatrous foreign wives who were the spark which could have returned the new Israel to idolatry. To us this might appear almost an irrelevance, but to the people who knew the harm that idolatry had done to Israel/Judah, it was the most important of all the steps taken to ensure the continuation of the community as YHWH’s people.

Background.

Following the return to Judah and Jerusalem, from Exile in Babylonia, of the ‘remnant of the captivity’ in 538 BC, along with those who followed later, the remnant had been having a pretty hard time of it (�ehemiah 1:3). This was not surprising because they faced opposition from four powerful groups:

1) Their fellow-Jews who had remained in the land, and who were syncretistic, worshipping both YHWH and idols, and who were therefore excluded from

worshipping with the remnant. They probably saw the returnees as bigoted upstarts. As a consequence they were bitter, especially as this excluded their right to worship in the new Temple, which was open only to those who were free from idolatry in any form. And their bitterness would have been increased by those among the remnant who claimed back family land which they had taken over.2) The non-Jews who were now in the area and who resented their presence as newcomers, seeing them as interlopers, and also resenting the similar claiming back of family land.3) The syncretistic Yahwists of Samaria, who had become so on being exiled to Samaria from other lands where they had worshipped other gods. They shared the resentment of the syncretistic Jews, because they too were prevented by these newcomers from worshipping with the remnant in the new Temple. Furthermore they had considerable influence with the Persian authorities.4) The non-Yahwists, who were in lands round about, who had been enemies of Judah of old, and who also resented their presence and the idea of them setting up a new ‘state’.So they were looked on with hostility by all, apart, that is, by those few in the land who had remained wholly faithful to YHWH, and who therefore now worshipped with them, or by those who had recommitted themselves to YHWH (Ezra 6:21).

There were moreover powerful voices among their adversaries, and these included the governor of the district of Samaria. These adversaries were in a position constantly to send accusations to the Persian king, and also to arrange that the remnant were given a very hard time. With regard to giving them a hard time it was not difficult in those days to organise gangs who could be disruptive, for when they did so, who would be able to prove anything? And they looked on a half-desolated Jerusalem as fair game, and no doubt took advantage of any wealth which came to Jerusalem because of the existence of the Temple with its worship. The remnant had partially tried to deal with this difficulty by building a wall round Jerusalem, which confirms that there was continual harassment of that partially populated city (Ezra 4:12-13; Ezra 4:21), but this had been circumvented by their enemies (Ezra 4:8-23), who, once they had persuaded the king of Persia to intervene and stop the work, had gone beyond their remit and had gleefully prevented the walls from being rebuilt, and had burned the new gates with fire (Ezra 4:23).

But it was not only Jerusalem that was vulnerable. In their own dwelling places situated among the peoples of the land the returnees were even more vulnerable. We do not know how far the governors of the area who followed Zerubbabel, and were prior to �ehemiah (445 BC), were prepared to act in their defence. We only know that by the time of 407 BC, per the Elephantine papyri, a (probable) Persian named Bagoas was the governor of Judea (alternately he may have been a Jewish prince with a Persian name). But it is clear from �ehemiah 1:3 that over these decades things had not been good, (they were ‘in great affliction and reproach’), and this was so even after the return of Ezra the Priest, with a new batch of returnees, who had been sent by the king to ensure the correct functioning of YHWH worship, something which had probably brought new life to the remnant. But his authority was in the religious sphere rather than the political. This was the parlous situation

at the time when this book opens.

Relationship Of The Book Of �ehemiah To The Book Of Ezra.

There can be little doubt that the two books, Ezra and �ehemiah, were brought together as one at an early date, and were early seen as one. All the external evidence points to this as a fact. Thus the question must arise as to whether they were ever issued separately, for it was not until the time of Origen, and then Jerome, that they were spoken of as two books, and even Origen agrees that in Hebrew tradition they were seen as one. Indeed, on the evidence that we have it was not until around the middle ages (1448 AD) that the Jews themselves depicted them as separate works, and this when the Hebrew text of the Scriptures was put into print. �evertheless the fact that this did occur demonstrates that there are good grounds for seeing them as separate works, and this would appear to be confirmed by the use in Ezra 2 and �ehemiah 7 of closely related lists, which, while not being identical, are sufficiently close for them to be seen as repetitive, something unlikely to have happened in a joint work. It is also suggested by the fat that both books end with the removal of idolatrous foreign wives, something which could be seen as the ultimate achievement of these godly leaders, as it rooted out attempts to return to idolatry. But in that case, why were the two books brought together so early? One good reason why they might initially have been brought together may have been in order to conform the number of Old Testament books to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet (just as the twelve ‘minor’ prophets were seen as one for a similar reason).

On these grounds, therefore, they have been treated in the commentary as separate books, something which is attested by their headings. �evertheless their relationship is certainly very close, and, indeed, that is what we would expect from two books written largely by contemporaries around the same time referring to contemporary events. �ehemiah’s abrupt and forceful style, however, punctuated with asides and frank comments, is unique, and there are few who would doubt his authorship of the main body of chapters 1 to 7 of the book, together with parts of chapters �ehemiah 12:31 to �ehemiah 13:31. Besides the change of subject between the end of Ezra and the commencement of the activities of �ehemiah might be seen as being too abrupt for them to be part of the same work. The idea that the two books are the work of the Chronicler has no external support, (unless 1 Esdras is seen as providing that support, but its support must be seen as extremely doubtful) and it must be doubted on the grounds of the different approach of the Chronicler.

Outline Of The Book.

1). �ehemiah obtains permission from the king of Persia to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and carries out the work in the face of great and continuing opposition, not resting until Jerusalem is once again secure (�ehemiah 1:1 to �ehemiah 7:73).

2). The Book of the Law is read and expounded on, and in consequence the people enter into a solemn covenant with God (8-10).

3). Jerusalem is established as the holy city, populated by true Israelites (�ehemiah 11:1-36); its worship is conducted by those who are shown to be genuinely descended from those chosen by the Law of Moses to conduct the worship of YHWH (�ehemiah 12:1-26); its wall and gates are purified and dedicated to YHWH and the means of sustenance of the Levites and priests is ensured (�ehemiah 12:27-47); the holy city is purified and caused to properly maintain the Sabbath whilst being cleansed of idolatrous foreign wives (�ehemiah 13:1-31).

�ehemiah’s Prayer

1 The words of �ehemiah son of Hakaliah:In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa,

BAR�ES, "The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah - The prophetical books commence generally with a title of this kind (see Jer_1:1); but no other extant historical book begins thus. Nehemiah, while attaching his work to Ezra, perhaps marked in this manner the point at which his own composition commenced. (See the introduction of the Book of Nehemiah.)

Chisleu - The ninth month, corresponding to the end of November and beginning of December.

In the twentieth year - i. e. of Artaxerxes Longimanus (465-425 B.C.). Compare Neh_2:1.

Shushan the palace - Compare Est_1:2, Est_1:5, etc.; Dan_8:2. Shushan, or Susa, was the ordinary residence of the Persian kings. “The palace” or acropolis was a distinct quarter of the city, occupying an artificial eminence.

CLARKE, "The words of Nehemiah - That this book was compiled out of the journal or memoranda made by Nehemiah himself, there can be no doubt: but that he was not the compiler is evident from several passages in the work it. self. As it is written consecutively as one book with Ezra, many have supposed that this latter was the author: but whoever compares the style of each, in the Hebrew, will soon be convinced that this is not correct; the style is so very different, that they could not possibly be the work of the same person.

It is doubtful even whether the Nehemiah who is mentioned Ezr_2:2, who came to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel, be the same with him who is the reputed author of this

book. By the computation of the best chronologists, Zerubbabel came to Jerusalem in A. M. 3468; and Nehemiah, who is here mentioned, did not come before the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, which falls in with A. M. 3558, ninety years after: and as his account here is carried down to A. M. 3570, nearly twenty years later, he must at his death have been about a hundred and thirty, allowing him to have been only twenty years old at the time that Zerubbabel went up to Jerusalem. This is by no means likely, as this would make him the king’s cupbearer when he was upwards of a hundred years of age! It seems, therefore, evident that the Nehemiah of Ezra cannot be the same with the reputed author of this book, and the cup-bearer of the Persian king.

Son of Hachaliah - Of what tribe or lineage he was, we cannot tell: this is all we know of his parentage. Some suppose he was a priest, and of the house of Aaron, on the authority of 2 Maccabees 1:18, 21; but this is but slender evidence. It is likely he was of a very eminent family, if not of the blood royal of Judah, as only persons of eminence could be placed in the office which he sustained in the Persian court.

Themonth Chisleu - Answering to a part of our November and December.

Twentieth year - That is, of Artaxerxes, A. M. 3558, b.c. 446.

Shushan the palace - The ancient city of Susa; called in Persian Shuster: the winter

residence of the Persian kings.

GILL, "The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah,.... Or his transactions and

deeds; for דברי "dibre" signifies things done, as well as words spoken; who Hachaliah his

father was is not known; the Arabic version adds, the high priest, without any foundation; though some have thought that Nehemiah was a priest, from a passage in"Therefore whereas we are now purposed to keep the purification of the temple upon the five and twentieth day of the month Chisleu, we thought it necessary to certify you thereof, that ye also might keep it, as the feast of the tabernacles, and of the fire, which was given us when Neemias offered sacrifice, after that he had builded the temple and the altar.'' (2 Maccabees 1:18)and from signing and sealing the covenant at the head of priests, Neh_10:1, but he rather seems to be of the tribe of Judah, see Neh_2:3, and Nehemiah may be the same that went up with Zerubbabel, and returned again, and then became the king's cupbearer; though some are of another opinion; see Gill on Ezr_2:2,

and it came to pass in the month Chisleu; the ninth month, as the Arabic version; of which see Ezr_10:9,

in the twentieth year; not of Nehemiah's age, for, if he went up with Zerubbabel, he must be many years older; but in the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, Neh_1:1,

as I was in Shushan the palace; a city in Persia, the royal seat of the kings of it; as Ecbatana was in the summer time, this in the spring, as Cyrus made it, according to Xenophon (b); but others say (c) it was their seat in winter, and this was the season now when Nehemiah was with the king there; for Chisleu was a winter month, answering to part of November and of December; of Shushan; see Gill on Dan_8:2, to which may be added what a traveller of the last century says (d) of it,"we rested at Valdac, once the great city Susa, but now very ruinous; it was first built by Tythonus, and his son Memnon, but enlarged by Darius the son of Hystaspes; in the building whereof Memnon was so exceeding prodigal, that, as Cassiodorus writeth, he joined the stones together with gold--such was the beauty and delectableness of it for situation, that they called it "Susa", which in the Persian tongue signified a "lily", but now it is called Valdac, because

of the poverty of the place;''and it is generally supposed to have its name from the abundance of lilies about it; but Dr. Hyde (e) gives another signification of its name, he says the Persians called it, "Sus", which signifies "liquorice", but for what reasons he says not. There is a city now called Shustera, and is thought by some travellers to be built at least very near where Shushan formerly stood (f).

HE�RY, "What tribe Nehemiah was of does nowhere appear; but, if it be true (which we are told by the author of the Maccabees, 2 Macc. 1:18) that he offered sacrifice, we must conclude him to have been a priest. Observe,

I. Nehemiah's station at the court of Persia. We are here told that he was in Shushan the palace, or royal city, of the king of Persia, where the court was ordinarily kept (Neh_1:1), and (Neh_1:11) that he was the king's cup-bearer. Kings and great men probably looked upon it as a piece of state to be attended by those of other nations. By this place at court he would be the better qualified for the service of his country in that post for which God had designed him, as Moses was the fitter to govern for being bred up in Pharaoh's court, and David in Saul's. He would also have the fairer opportunity of serving his country by his interest in the king and those about him. Observe, He is not forward to tell us what great preferment he had at court; it is not till the end of the chapter that he tells us he was the king's cup-bearer (a place of great trust, as well as of honour and profit), when he could not avoid the mentioning of it because of the following story; but at first he only said, I was in Shushan the palace. We may hence learn to be humble and modest, and slow to speak of our own advancements. But in the providences of God concerning him we may observe, to our comfort, 1. That when God has work to do he will never want instruments to do it with. 2. That those whom God designs to employ in his service he will find out proper ways both to fit for it and to call to it. 3. That God has his remnant in all places; we read of Obadiah in the house of Ahab, saints in Caesar's household, and a devout Nehemiah in Shushan the palace. 4. That God can make the courts of princes sometimes nurseries and sometimes sanctuaries to the friends and patrons of the church's cause.

JAMISO�, "Neh_1:1-3. Nehemiah, understanding by Hanani the afflicted state of Jerusalem, mourns, fasts and prays.

Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah — This eminently pious and patriotic Jew is to be carefully distinguished from two other persons of the same name - one of whom is mentioned as helping to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Neh_3:16), and the other is noticed in the list of those who accompanied Zerubbabel in the first detachment of returning exiles (Ezr_2:2; Neh_7:7). Though little is known of his genealogy, it is highly probable that he was a descendant of the tribe of Judah and the royal family of David.

in the month Chisleu — answering to the close of November and the larger part of December.

Shushan the palace — the capital of ancient Susiana, east of the Tigris, a province of Persia. From the time of Cyrus it was the favorite winter residence of the Persian kings.

K&D, "In the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah, being then at Susa, received from one of his brethren, and other individuals from Judah, information which deeply grieved him, concerning the sad condition of the captive who had returned

to the land of their fathers, and the state of Jerusalem. Neh_1:1 contains the title of the whole book: the History of Nehemiah. By the addition “son of Hachaliah,” Nehemiah is distinguished from others of the same name (e.g., from Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, Neh_3:16). Another Nehemiah, too, returned from captivity with Zerubbabel, Ezr_2:2. Of Hachaliah we know nothing further, his name occurring but once more, Neh_10:2, in conjunction, as here, with that of Nehemiah. Eusebius and Jerome assert that Nehemiah was of the tribe of Judah, - a statement which may be correct, but is unsupported by any evidence from the Old Testament. According to Neh_1:11, he was cup-bearer to the Persian king, and was, at his own request, appointed for some time Pecha, i.e., governor, of Judah. Comp. Neh_5:14; Neh_12:26, and Neh_8:9; Neh_10:2. “In the month Chisleu of the twentieth year I was in the citadel of Susa” - such is the manner in which Nehemiah commences the narrative of his labours for Jerusalem. Chisleu is the ninth month of the year, answering to our December. Comp. Zec_7:1, 1 Macc. 4:52. The twentieth year is, according to Neh_2:1, the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus. On the citadel of Susa, see further details in the remarks on Dan_8:2. Susa was the capital of the province Susiana, and its citadel, called by the Greeks Memnoneion, was strongly fortified. The kings of Persia were accustomed to reside here during some months of the year.

COFFMA�, "�EHEMIAH GETS THE BAD �EWS ABOUT JERUSALEM

Josephus has a tale regarding the manner in which �ehemiah received this bad news. One day as he was walking around the palace in Susa, he heard some Jews speaking in the Hebrew language and inquired of them regarding conditions in Jerusalem. They told him of the constant enmity of the neighboring people, and of how they were subjected to harassment day and night, and even that many dead people could be found along the roads.[1] The Scriptural account does not exactly correspond with this, unless we should set aside the usual opinion of commentators that Hanani was an actual brother of �ehemiah; but the narratives have one thing in common. Hanani was only one of several people who brought the bad news.

"It cannot be definitely ascertained whether or not Hanani was actually a blood brother of �ehemiah. However, in �ehemiah 7:2, �ehemiah again referred to him as his brother, leading to the speculation that he was really a brother in the ordinary sense."[2] Williamson wrote that, "It is likely that the word (brother) should be taken literally."[3]

"The words of �ehemiah the son of Hacaliah.

"�ow it came to pass in the month Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men out of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, that were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem."

"The words of �ehemiah" (�ehemiah 1:1). This stands as the title of the whole book; and the critical canard that, "These words were probably added by a later scribe,"[4] should be rejected. "�o other historical book begins in this manner,"[5]

and therefore no `later scribe' could possibly have been so foolish as to make such an unheard of addition. However, all of the prophetic books begin thus; and in all these cases they constitute the title of the book, as they most certainly do here. "Verse 1a (�ehemiah 1:1) here contains the title of the whole book."[6] "This book is one of the outstanding autobiographical masterpieces of the ancient world."[7]

"�ehemiah the son of Hacaliah" (�ehemiah 1:1). The tribe to which �ehemiah belonged is not revealed; but, "Eusebius and Jerome assert that he was of the tribe of Judah."[8] Jamieson supposed that this is true and added further that, "He was of the royal family of David."[9] Matthew Henry, however, stated that, "If 2 Maccabees 1:18 is the truth in their statement that �ehemiah offered sacrifices, then we must conclude that he was a priest and therefore of the tribe of Levi."[10] These references are an excellent example of scholarly comment on something which the sacred Scriptures do not reveal.

"The month Chislev in the twentieth year" (�ehemiah 1:2). The month Chislev corresponded to our �ovember-December; and the twentieth year here is a reference to, "The twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes I (Longimanus), in the year 445 B.C."[11]

"In Shushan the palace" (�ehemiah 1:2). "This is the same place as Susa, where Daniel saw the vision of the ram with two horns (Daniel 8:2),"[12] and, "Where, in the year 478 B.C., Esther became Xerxes' queen in this palace."[13] "This place was the winter residence of Persian kings";[14] "It was located east of the river Tigris and near the head of the Persian gulf."[15]

TRAPP, " The words of �ehemiah the son of Hachaliah. And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace,

Ver. 1. The words of �ehemiah] Or, the deeds, for he was good at both; and so a singular comfort to his countrymen, according to the notation of his name �ehemiah, i.e. The comfort or rest of the Lord. Here hence also some infer, that �ehemiah himself was the penman of this book (and not Ezra, as the vulgar Latin and many ancients would have it), like as Julius Caesar wrote his own acts (so did Alexander Severus and M. Aurelius, emperors), and by a more modest name, called his book Commentaries, and not Histories; yet did it so well, ut praerepta non praebita facultas scriptoribus videatur, said Aulus Hirtius, that historians had their work done to their hands; he wrote with the same spirit he fought, saith Quintilian, Eodem animo dixit, quo bellavit, lib. 10.

And it came to pass] This book then is a continuation of the former; �ehemiah being a third instrument of procuring this people’s good, after Zerubbabel and Ezra; and deservedly counted and called a third founder of that commonwealth, after Joshua and David.

In the month Chisleu] In the deep of winter: then it was that Hanani and his brethren undertook their journey into Persia, for the good of the Church.

In the twentieth year] sc. Of Artaxerxes Longimanus, thirteen years after Ezra and his company first came to Jerusalem, Ezra 7:8, with �ehemiah 2:1.

I was in Shushan the palace] i.e. In the palace of the city Susan; this Susan signifieth a lily, and was so called, likely, for the beauty and delectable site. �ow it is called Vahdac of the poverty of the place. Here was �ehemiah waiting upon his office, and promoting the good of his people. Strabo and others say, that the inhabitants of Susia were quiet and peaceable; and were therefore the better beloved by the kings of Persia, Cyrus being the first that made his chief abode there, in winter especially; and that this city was long, and in compass fifteen miles about.

BE�SO�,". The words of �ehemiah — Or, the acts, as the Hebrew word here used often signifies; that is, the things which �ehemiah did. In the month Chisleu —Which answers to part of our �ovember and December. In the twentieth year —�amely, of the reign of Artaxerxes. As I was in Shushan the palace — In the region of Elimais, where the Persian kings kept their court in the winter, and which, from its pleasant and beautiful situation, was called by heathen writers Susa, which signifies a lily, or, as Athenaeus says, a rose.

WHEDO�, "THE SAD TIDI�GS FROM JUDAH, �ehemiah 1:1-3.

1. The words of �ehemiah — Like each book of the twelve minor prophets, this Book of �ehemiah opens with an announcement of its author’s name. In thus it differs from all the other historical books. �ehemiah is here called the son of Hachaliah, but otherwise his genealogy is unknown. He was, probably, like Zerubbabel, a descendant of the house of Judah, and of the family of David. His words are here to be understood, not merely as his discourses, but his acts and experiences also.

The month Chisleu — The ninth month of the Jewish year, corresponding nearly with our December. It was amid the rains of this same month, twelve years before, that the Jews assembled at Jerusalem to Ezra to confess their sins, and to put away their heathen wives. Ezra 10:9.

The twentieth year — Of Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Comp. �ehemiah 2:1.

Shushan the palace — So called because it was the seat of the principal palace of the Persian Empire. Strabo says (xv, 3, 3) that the palace of this place was embellished more than the other palaces of the empire. Shushan, or, as it is more commonly called, Susa, was the winter residence of the kings of Persia, as Ecbatana was their summer residence. See note on Ezra 6:2. It has been identified with the modern Sus, or Shush. Its ruins cover a space six thousand feet long, by four thousand five

hundred feet broad. By excavations made in these mounds of rubbish, Mr. Loftus, in 1852, discovered what he regards as the remains of the identical palace mentioned here and in the Book of Esther. He ascertained the position of the seventy-two columns of the ancient palace, and was thus enabled to present the following ground-plan. In this plan there is a great central hall of thirty-six columns, surrounded on three sides by great porches, each having twelve columns. These columns were over eight feet in diameter, and stand about twenty-seven feet apart. The same plan appears, also, in the great palace of Xerxes at Persepolis. See note on Esther 5:1. These exterior porches were, according to Fergusson, the great audience halls, and served the same purpose as the “house of the forest of Lebanon” in Solomon’s palace. It was at this great palace that Daniel saw his vision of the ram and the he goat, (Daniel 8:2;) here Xerxes “sat on the throne of his kingdom” when he ordered the feast at which he proposed to exhibit the beauty of his queen Vashti, (Esther 1:2;) and here �ehemiah served as cupbearer.

Shushan was one of the most ancient and celebrated cities of the East, and was wisely fixed upon by the kings of Persia as the chief seat of their court and empire. Its ruins are situated about one hundred miles north of the northern end of the Persian Gulf, in a fertile region watered by the rivers Kherkhah and Dizful.

COKE, ". �ehemiah— It may be well questioned, whether this �ehemiah be the same with him mentioned in Ezra 2:1 and chap. �ehemiah 7:7 of this book, as one who returned from the Babylonish captivity under Zerubbabel; since, from the first year of Cyrus to the twentieth of Artaxerxes Longimanus, there are no less than ninety-two years intervening; so that �ehemiah must at this time have been a very old man; upon the lowest computation above a hundred, and consequently incapable of being the king's cup-bearer, of taking a journey from Shushan to Jerusalem, and of behaving there with all that courage and activity which is recorded of him. Upon this presumption, therefore, we may conclude, that this was a different person, though of the same name. That Tirshatha denotes the title of his office, and, both in the Persian and Chaldean tongues, was the general name given to all the king's deputies and governors, see on Ezra 2:63. The text calls him barely the son of Hachaliah, without informing us of what tribe he was. Some, therefore, from 2 Maccabees 1:18; 2 Maccabees 1:21 where he is said to have offered sacrifices, and from his being reckoned at the head of the priests who signed the new covenant with God (ch. �ehemiah 10:1.), have affirmed him to have been of the family of Aaron; but as there is nothing conclusive in all this, and it seems expressly contradicted by his saying, in another place, that he was not a fit person to shelter himself in the temple, chap. �ehemiah 6:2 the far greater part suppose him to have been of the royal family of Judah. And this is so much the more probable, because we find none but such promoted to those high stations about the king's person; and we never read of a priest that was so till a long time after, and upon a quite different account. The month Chisleu answers to part of our �ovember and December, and the twentieth year is the twentieth of the reign of Artaxerxes. See Le Clerc and Houbigant.

CO�STABLE, "Verses 1-3

1. The news concerning Jerusalem1:1-3

The month Chislev ( �ehemiah 1:1) corresponds to our late �ovember and early December. [�ote: For the Hebrew calendar, see the appendix to my notes on Ezra.] The year in view was the twentieth year of Artaxerxes" reign (i.e, 445-444 B.C.). Susa (or Shushan, in Hebrew) was a winter capital of Artaxerxes (cf. Esther 1:2). The main Persian capital at this time was Persepolis.

Hanani ( �ehemiah 1:2) seems to have been �ehemiah"s blood brother (cf. �ehemiah 7:2). The escape in view refers to the Jews" escape back to Judea from captivity in Babylon. Even though they received official permission to return, �ehemiah seems to have regarded their departure from Babylon as an escape, since the Babylonians had originally forced them into exile against their wills.

The news that �ehemiah received evidently informed him of the Jews" unsuccessful attempts to rebuild Jerusalem"s walls in458 B.C. ( Ezra 4:23-24).

"It was an ominous development, for the ring of hostile neighbors round Jerusalem could now claim royal backing. The patronage which Ezra had enjoyed (cf. Ezra 7:21-26) was suddenly in ruins, as completely as the city walls and gates. Jerusalem was not only disarmed but on its own." [�ote: Derek Kidner, Ezra and �ehemiah , p78. Cf. Eugene H. Merrill, in The Old Testament Explorer, p353.]

ELLICOTT, "(1) In the month Chisleu.—The names rather than the numbers of the months are generally employed after the captivity: �isan, Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av, Elul, Tishri, Marchesvan, Chisleu, Tebeth, Shevat, Adar; with an intercalary month, the second Adar. Chisleu answers nearly to our December.

In the twentieth year.—Of the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, which began B.C. 465 and ended B.C. 425.

In Shushan the palace.—Susa, the capital of Susiana; where, after the capture of the Babylonian empire, a great palace was built by Darius Hystaspis, the ruins of which are still seen. It was the principal and favourite residence of the Persian court, alternating with Persepolis, the older capital, and Babylon. Shushan was one of the most ancient cities in the world; and is associated with the visions of Daniel, and with the feast of Ahasuerus (Daniel 8:2, Esther 1:3).

PARKER, "The words of �ehemiah , the son of Hachaliah" ( �ehemiah 1:1).

The Message to �ehemiah

WHAT should we imagine was coming from such an opening of a book? We should naturally suppose that we were about to hear an ordinary narrative—to listen to the contemplations and reflections of a literary man. He is simply about to say something—he promises nothing more than words— yet out of this very simple and humble beginning we have one of the most remarkable stories of activity that can be

found in any writing. Words are more than we think—everything depends on the speaker. To some persons life appears to be only an affair of words, syllables, empty utterances—that is to say, they are people who must talk: they have a good deal to say about nothing, and they say nothing about it, and their life is thus summed up as mere gabblers and gossips, speakers without a speech, words with no battles behind them. These, however, are the words of �ehemiah , the governor of Judah and Jerusalem. When such a man speaks, he means to do something—his purpose is always practical, but he thinks it needful to lay down a good strong basis of explanation, that people may understand clearly why he began to work and upon what principles he proceeded.

�ehemiah lived in a very wonderful time. If we could have called together into one great council all the great men who lived within the eighty years which were the measure of �ehemiah"s own life, we should have had one of the most wonderful councils that ever assembled under heaven. There is �ehemiah in the middle; yonder is Æschylus writing his tragedies in Athens; Democritus elaborating a philosophy whose atomism and materialism are coming up as the originalities of our own day; Aristophanes elaborating his wonderful comedies; Herodotus writing his gossipy history, and Thucydides writing a history marked by much majesty. And bring also into this symposium Plato and Socrates and other of the most notable men that ever led the civilised world—they were all living within that same span of eighty years, yet what different lives they were pursuing! The words of the comedy-writer were words only; the words of the great tragic composer were only words—with a keener accent, however; but the words of �ehemiah meant strife, contention, the assertion of right, patriotism, battle—if need be, the reclamation of a lost cause, the leading of a forlorn hope. What do our words mean? Do we purpose to carry out our words? Are they words that culminate in covenants, or mere empty syllables used for jangling in the air? If we did but know it, a word should have blood in it—a word should be part of our innermost heart; a word should be a bond; a saying should be a seal; an utterance should be a pledge made sacred with all the resources and all the responsibilities of life.

"And it came to pass [rather, �ow it came to pass] in the month Chisleu [the ninth month, corresponding to the end of �ovember and beginning of December (see Zechariah 7:1)], in the twentieth year [i.e. of Artaxerxes (comp. ch. �ehemiah 2:1)], as I was in Shushan the palace" [comp. Ezekiel 1:2, Ezekiel 1:5, etc.; Daniel 8:2. Shushan, or Susa, was the ordinary residence of the Persian kings. "The palace," or acropolis, was a distinct quarter of the city, occupying an artificial eminence] ( �ehemiah 1:1).

It was in the very grey December time that the message came. It was about our midwinter that the messenger arrived in Persia. How does it come that we set down some days as the beginning of other dates? We call them red-letter days—they are memorable points in our poor changing story. "Twas the day when your mother died; "twas the day when the poor little child had that serious accident which threatened its life; "twas that crisis in your commercial affairs when you did not know but that the morrow would find you a beggar; "twas just as you were pulling

your foot out of that pit of long affliction which you thought would have swallowed you up; and you date from these occurrences, landmarks, memorable points, eras in your story. And �ehemiah never could forget that December day when Hanani came, and he asked him that all-important question we are now about to consider.

PETT, "The book opens with a typical opening line. �ehemiah was not a prophet and therefore we would not expect it to say too much. But he was an extremely important person within the Persian Empire. He was ‘cupbearer to the king’. That does not mean that he was a waiter. It indicates that he was the man who received the cup from a servant, and after tasting it to see if it was poisoned by pouring the wine into his hand and drinking it, handed it to the king. He was thus the one man in a position to most easily poison the king. Consequently he was a man in whom the king placed absolute trust. And we soon discover that �ehemiah had entry into the king’s presence at other times, which accentuates his importance. Few had that privilege.

Introduction.

�ehemiah 1:1

‘The words of �ehemiah the son of Hacaliah.’It is possible that the simple title ‘�ehemiah the son of Hacaliah’ was considered by him as sufficient to indicate who he was. It may well have been his view that it was only lesser men who had to provide details. In his day his name said everything. He was, of course aware that he intended to provide some detail later (�ehemiah 1:11), but that was in the course of the narrative. Here he was simply ‘�ehemiah ben Hacaliah’, a man of renown. �ehemiah means ‘Yah has comforted’. The meaning of Hacaliah is unknown. The name �ehemiah was a common one and is testified to of others in �ehemiah 3:16 and Ezra 2:2. It is also attested in extra-Biblical records. But there was only one �ehemiah ben Halachiah

On the other hand some see in this description the hand of the editor as he sought to combine �ehemiah’s record with the book of Ezra. But however we see it, some such introduction would always have been necessary, even prior to that, so that we would know who was in mind in what was to follow. And besides, if it were the words of an editor we might have expected a more detailed introduction. It was only the man himself, aware of his own importance, who could be so brief. And this would also explain the seemingly careless dating (the king’s name is not mentioned).

‘The words of --.’ The Hebrew word translated ‘words’ often indicates doings and activities, and it clearly does that here. The aim is to describe �ehemiah’s deeds, and what he accomplished. Compare 1 Kings 11:41; 1 Kings 14:19; 1 Chronicles 29:29; 2 Chronicles 9:29.

�ehemiah Learns Of The Sad Condition Of Those Who Had Escaped from Babylon

And Of The Recent Destruction Of The Walls Of Jerusalem That The Returnees Were Attempting To Build (�ehemiah 1:1-3).

�ehemiah 1:1-2

‘�ow it came about in the month Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the fortress, that Hanani, one of my kinsmen, came, he and certain men out of Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.’

As with the name, so with the date. He assumes that the recipient of his account will know which king it is whose reign it is the twentieth year of, (he also knows that he will make it clear in �ehemiah 2:1). This may portray the haughtiness and contemporary attitude of someone who felt that there was no need to say more, because the long reign of Artaxerxes was a permanent institution throughout the empire. He would not have known that he was writing for posterity. Alternatively it may indicate that it was chapter 2 which began an official record made by him, possibly in a report to the king, and that he added this explanatory information in chapter 1, with the date given in �ehemiah 2:1 being in mind, when he made it available to a wider audience. He would know that the reader would find the more detailed reference in �ehemiah 2:1. The twentieth year of Artaxerxes (�ehemiah 2:1) would be 446 BC, and the month of Chislev around �ovember/December. It was the ninth month of the Jewish calendar commencing from the first month �isan (Passover month - March/April). This raises a slight problem in that the following �isan (�ehemiah 2:1) is also said to be in the twentieth year, but that is probably looking at the numbering from the point of view of the commencement of the reign of Artaxerxes rather than the commencement of the �ew Year.

Again some see in this lack of mention of the king’s name the hand of an editor who was conjoining the two narratives, of Ezra and �ehemiah, who expected his readers to refer back to Ezra 7:1; Ezra 7:11; Ezra 7:21; Ezra 8:1. But those references are rather remote, and anyway the same argument could have applied in �ehemiah 2:1, and yet the details of the reign are given there. It thus rather suggests that �ehemiah 2:1 was what was in mind.

‘The fortress Shushan (Susa).’ This was the winter residence of the Persian kings, with Ecbatana being their summer residence (Ezra 6:1). The ruins of Susa lie near the River Karun and it was once, in the second millennium BC, the capital of Elam, continuing as such into the first millennium. It was a powerful and impressive city. It was finally sacked by Ashurbanipal of Assyria in 645 BC, who sent men into exile from there to Samaria (Susanchites - Ezra 4:9). But it was restored, and it was at Susa that Daniel had one of his visions (Daniel 8:2). Darius I built his palace there, and it was there that Xerxes (Ahasuerus) demoted his chief wife, Vashti, replacing her with Esther (Esther 1-2). The fortress had again been restored by Artaxerxes.

It is apparent from this verse that �ehemiah regularly received fellow-Jews as guests into the king’s fortress, so that it is not surprising that Jewish affairs

obtained a hearing at high levels. Hanani, (‘He is gracious’), whom he received at this time, along with other prominent Jews, may well have been his brother, although the word need only indicate a kinsman. The Hanani in �ehemiah 7:2 may or may not be identical, for Hanani was a common name. We do not know whether this was just a private visit, or whether it was a deputation concerning some official matter. �or do we know whether they were visiting from Judah, or had simply been to Judah on a visit. �ehemiah may well have summoned them on learning of their arrival from Judah because he wanted to learn about the situation there.

Whichever way it was he asked them concerning the situation in Judah and Jerusalem, and how ‘those who had escaped, who were left of the captivity’ were going on. He clearly had a deep interest in the land of his forefathers. The question then arises as to who he was referring to by these words. Does he mean the returned exiles who had ‘escaped’ from Babylonia, a remnant of the captivity, who had returned to Judah (compare Ezra 9:8 which speaks of ‘a remnant to escape’), or is he speaking of those who had initially escaped captivity and had remained in Judah? The former appears more likely, especially in view of Ezra 9:8. It is certainly not likely that he was unaware of the fact that exiles had returned to Judah from Babylonia under the decrees of the kings of Persia, and he would naturally as a Jew himself be concerned about their welfare.

LA�GE, "�ehemiah 1:1. The title of the book is contained in its first four (Hebrew) words, Divre �ehemyah Ben ‘Hachalyah,[F�3]i.e., The words of �ehemiah, the son of Hachaliah.—Even the prophets sometimes begin their books in this way (see Jeremiah 1:1, and Amos 1:1), although with them the Devar Yehovah (the Word of the Lord) finds its place soon after. The absence of the Devar Yehovah here is nothing against the inspired character of the book. Its presence in the prophets is simply a token of their prophetic character, as they speak to the people directly in God’s name with a special message. In the historical books, even in the Pentateuch, the sacred foundation of them all, this phrase very naturally is not found. Here, as in 1 Chronicles 29:29, and elsewhere, “the words of” are really “the words about,” or “the history of.” In Jeremiah 1:1, Amos 1:1, etc., they have the literal meaning. (Dathe rightly “historia �ehemiah”). (For the name and history of �ehemiah, see the Introduction).

The starting-point of �ehemiah’s words (or history) is in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, in Shushan the palace.—Chisleu was the ninth month, Abib or �isan (in which the passover fell) being the first. Chisleu would thus answer to parts of �ovember and December. Josephus makes it (Χασλεὺ) the same as the Macedonian Apellæus (Ant. xii7, 6), which was the second month of the Macedonian year, whose first month Dius began at the autumnal equinox. Apellæus would thus be from the latter part of October to the latter part of �ovember. Josephus’ was probably satisfied in identifying the two months of Chisleu and Apellæus, to find some portion of time belonging equally to both. They certainly did not coincide throughout.

Chisleu is not likely to be a Persian month-name, as has been conjectured. The

Behistun inscription gives us eight Persian month-names, to wit, Bagayadish, Viyakhna, Garmapada, Atriyatiya, Anamaka, Thuravahara, Thaigarchish and Adukanish. It is true that in all but the first of these battles are recorded as occurring, so that they are not probably winter months. Yet the style of the names would scarcely warrant us in supposing that Chisleu would be in such a list. As Chisleu appears on a Palmyrene inscription (Chaslul), it may be of Syrian origin. This month-name occurs in the Hebrew only after the captivity, to wit, in this place and in Zechariah 7:1. Fuerst suggests Chesil (Orion-Mars) as the base of the name, the name being brought from Babylonia by the exiles; but the name is found in the Assyrian, as are the other ( Song of Solomon -supposed) Persian month-names of the Jews, which is strong presumptive evidence of their Shemitic origin.

The “twentieth year” Isaiah, as in �ehemiah 2:1, the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (Heb. Arta‘hshasta), who reigned from B. C465 to425. The year designated is therefore parts of B. C446,445, when the “age of Pericles” was beginning in Athens, and when Rome was yet unknown to the world. (For Artaxerxes, see Introduction). “Shushan the palace” (Heb. Shushan Habbirah) was the royal portion of the “city Shushan” ( Esther 3:15). Shushan or Susa (now Sus) lay between the Eulæus (Ulai) and Shapur rivers, in a well-watered district, and was the capital of Susiana or Cissia, the Scriptural Elam ( Isaiah 11:11) the country lying between the southern Zagros mountains and the Tigris. It early furnished a dynasty to Babylonia ( Genesis 14:1), was conquered by Asshur-bani-pal about B. C660, and shortly afterward fell to the lot of the later Babylonian Empire. When the Persians had conquered this Empire, Susa was made a royal residence by Darius Hystaspes, who built the great palace, whose ruins now attract the attention of archæologists. Artaxerxes (the king of �ehemiah’s time) repaired the palace, whose principal features resembled those of the chief edifice at Persepolis, the older capital of the Persian Empire. The present ruins of Susa cover a space about a mile square, the portion of which near the river Shapur is probably “Shushan the palace.”

Athenæus ( �ehemiah 12:8) says, Κλθῆναι τὰ Σοῦά φησιν Ἀρισόβουλος καὶ Xάρης διὰ τὴν ὡραιότητα τοῦ τόπον· σοῦσον γὰρ εἶναι τῇ Ελλήνων (? Ἐλυµαίων) φωνῇ τὸ κρίνον. So Steph. Byzant, Σοῦσα ἀπὸ τῶν κρίνων, ἅ πολλὰ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ πεφύκει εκείνῃ. If this be true we must accord it a Shemitic origin, which is against other evidence. Shushan may be a Turanian or an Aryan word, whose likeness to “Shushan” (Shemit. for lily) has deceived the old writers. Susa was the court’s principal residence, Ecbatana or Persepolis being visited for the summer only, and Babylon being sometimes occupied in the depth of winter.

PULPIT, "CIRCUMSTA�CES U�DER WHICH �EHEMIAH OBTAI�ED HIS COMMISSIO� TO REBUILD THE WALL OF JERUSALEM (�ehemiah 1:1-11; �ehemiah 2:1-8). Living at the Persian court, far from the land which he looked on as his true country, though perhaps he had never seen it, �ehemiah seems to have known but little of its condition and circumstances; and it is quite possible that he might have remained in his ignorance during the term of his natural life but for an accident. Some event—we do not know what—called his brother Hanani to Jerusalem; and on his return to Susa this brother gave him a description of the

dismantled state of the holy city, and the "affliction and reproach" of the inhabitants consequent thereupon, which threw him into a paroxysm of grief. With the openness and passion of an Oriental, he abandoned himself to his feelings; or, in his own words, "sat down and wept, and mourned for days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven" (�ehemiah 1:4). Whether he was in regular attendance at this time upon the king does not appear. Perhaps the court was absent, wintering—as it sometimes did—at Babylon, and he had not accompanied it; perhaps it was at Susa, but the office of cupbearer was being discharged by others. At any rate, more than three months had elapsed from the time when he heard of the affliction of Jerusalem before his changed appearance was noted by the king. It was the month �isan, that which followed the vernal equinox, the first of the Jewish year, when Artaxerxes, observing the sadness of his attendant, inquired its cause. �ehemiah revealed it, and the king further inquired, "For what dost thou make request?' This was the origin of �ehemiah's commission. He asked and obtained permission to quit the court for a definite time (�ehemiah 2:6), and to go to Jerusalem with authority to "build" the city. This was understood to include the repair of the governor's house, of the fortress which commanded the temple area, and of the city wall (ibid. verse 8). It necessarily involved �ehemiah's appointment as governor, and the notification of this appointment to the existing satraps and pashas. Leave was also given him to cut such timber as was needed for the work in the "king's forest" or "park," a royal domain situated in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. �ehemiah, having obtained this firman, left Susa early in the spring of b.c. 444, accompanied by an escort of Persian troops (verse 9), and reached Jerusalem in safety, having on his way communicated his appoint. merit to the officials of the Syrian province.

�ehemiah 1:1

The words of �ehemiah the son of Hachaliah. Compare Jeremiah 1:1; Hosea 1:2; Amos 1:1, etc. �o other historical book commences in this manner, and we may best account for the introduction of the clause by the consideration that "�ehemiah" having been originally appended to "Ezra," it marked the point at which a new narrative began by a new author. The month Chisleu. The word Chisleu, or rather Kislev, is probably Persian. It was unknown to the Jews before the captivity, and is found only in this passage and in Zechariah 7:1, where Kislev is said to be "the ninth month," corresponding nearly to our December. The twentieth year. The twentieth regnal year of Artaxerxes (Longimanus) is intended (see Zechariah 2:1). This began in b.c. 445, and terminated in b.c. 444. Shushan the palace, where Daniel saw the vision of the ram with two horns (Daniel 8:2), and Ahasuerus (Xerxes) made his great feast to all his princes and servants (Esther 1:3), is beyond all doubt Susa, the capital city of Kissia, or Susiana, one of the most ancient cities in the world, and the place which, from the time of Darius Hystaspis was the principal residence of the Persian court. It was situated in the fertile plain east of the Lower Tigris, and lay on or near the river Choaspes, probably at the spot now known as Sus, or Shush. Remains of the palace were discovered by the expedition under Sir Fenwick Williams in the year 1852, and have been graphically described by Mr. Loftus.

MACLARE�, "A REFORMER’S SCHOOLI�G�ehemiah 1:1 - �ehemiah 1:11.The date of the completion of the Temple is 516 B.C.; that of �ehemiah’s arrival 445 B.C. The colony of returned exiles seems to have made little progress during that long period. Its members settled down, and much of their enthusiasm cooled, as we see from the reforms which Ezra had to inaugurate fourteen years before �ehemiah. The majority of men, even if touched by spiritual fervour, find it hard to keep on the high levels for long. Breathing is easier lower down. As is often the case, a brighter flame of zeal burned in the bosoms of sympathisers at a distance than in those of the actual workers, whose contact with hard realities and petty details disenchanted them. Thus the impulse to nobler action came, not from one of the colony, but from a Jew in the court of the Persian king.

This passage tells us how God prepared a man for a great work, and how the man prepared himself.I. Sad tidings and their effect on a devout servant of God [�ehemiah 1:1 - �ehemiah 1:4]. The time and place are precisely given. ‘The month Chislev’ corresponds to the end of �ovember and beginning of December. ‘The twentieth year’ is that of Artaxerxes [�ehemiah 2:1]. ‘Shushan,’ or Susa, was the royal winter residence, and ‘the palace’ was ‘a distinct quarter of the city, occupying an artificial eminence.’ �ote the absence of the name of the king. �ehemiah is so familiar with his greatness that he takes for granted that every reader can fill the gaps. But, though the omission shows how large a space the court occupied in his thoughts, a true Jewish heart beat below the courtier’s robe. That flexibility which enabled them to stand as trusted servants of the kings of many lands, and yet that inflexible adherence to, and undying love of, Israel, has always been a national characteristic. We can think of this youthful cup-bearer as yearning for one glimpse of the ‘mountains round about Jerusalem’ while he filled his post in Shushan.His longings were kindled into resolve by intercourse with a little party of Jews from Judaea, among whom was his own brother. They had been to see how things went there, and the fact that one of them was a member of �ehemiah’s family seems to imply that the same sentiments belonged to the whole household. Eager questions brought out sorrowful answers. The condition of the ‘remnant’ was one of ‘great affliction and reproach,’ and the ground of the reproach was probably [�ehemiah 2:17; �ehemiah 4:2 - �ehemiah 4:4] the still ruined fortifications.It has been supposed that the breaking down of the walls and burning of the gates, mentioned in �ehemiah 1:3, were recent, and subsequent to the events recorded in Ezra; but it is more probable that the project for rebuilding the defences, which had been stopped by superior orders [Ezra 4:12 - Ezra 4:16], had not been resumed, and that the melancholy ruins were those which had met the eyes of Zerubbabel nearly a hundred years before. Communication between Shushan and Jerusalem cannot have been so infrequent that the facts now borne in on �ehemiah might not have been known before. But the impression made by facts depends largely on their narrator, and not a little on the mood of the hearer. It was one thing to hear general statements, and another to sit with one’s brother, and see through his eyes the dismal failure of the ‘remnant’ to carry out the purpose of their return. So the story,

whether fresh or repeated with fresh force, made a deep dint in the young cupbearer’s heart, and changed his life’s outlook. God prepares His servants for their work by laying on their souls a sorrowful realisation of the miseries which other men regard, and they themselves have often regarded, very lightly. The men who have been raised up to do great work for God and men, have always to begin by greatly and sadly feeling the weight of the sins and sorrows which they are destined to remove. �o man will do worthy work at rebuilding the walls who has not wept over the ruins.So �ehemiah prepared himself for his work by brooding over the tidings with tears, by fasting and by prayer. There is no other way of preparation. Without the sad sense of men’s sorrows, there will be no earnestness in alleviating them, nor self-sacrificing devotion; and without much prayer there will be little consciousness of weakness or dependence on divine help.�ote the grand and apparently immediate resolution to throw up brilliant prospects and face a life of danger and suffering and toil. �ehemiah was evidently a favourite with the king, and had the ball at his foot. But the ruins on Zion were more attractive to him than the splendours of Shushan, and he willingly flung away his chances of a great career to take his share of ‘affliction and reproach.’ He has never had justice done him in popular estimation. He is not one of the well-known biblical examples of heroic self-abandonment; but he did just what Moses did, and the eulogium of the Epistle to the Hebrews fits him as well as the lawgiver; for he too chose ‘rather to suffer with the people of God than to enjoy pleasures for a season.’ So must we all, in our several ways, do, if we would have a share in building the walls of the city of God.II. The prayer [�ehemiah 1:5 - �ehemiah 1:11]. The course of thought in this prayer is very instructive. It begins with solemnly laying before God His own great name, as the mightiest plea with Him, and the strongest encouragement to the suppliant. That commencement is no mere proper invocation, conventionally regarded as the right way of beginning, but it expresses the petitioner’s effort to lay hold on God’s character as the ground of his hope of answer. The terms employed remarkably blend what �ehemiah had learned from Persian religion and what from a better source. He calls upon Jehovah, the great name which was the special possession of Israel. He also uses the characteristic Persian designation of ‘the God of heaven,’ and identifies the bearer of that name, not with the god to whom it was originally applied, but with Israel’s Jehovah. He takes the crown from the head of the false deity, and lays it at the feet of the God of his fathers. Whatsoever names for the Supreme Excellence any tongues have coined, they all belong to our God, in so far as they are true and noble. The modern ‘science of comparative religion’ yields many treasures which should be laid up in Jehovah’s Temple.But the rest of the designations are taken from the Old Testament, as was fitting. The prayer throughout is full of allusions and quotations, and shows how this cupbearer of Artaxerxes had fed his young soul on God’s word, and drawn thence the true nourishment of high and holy thoughts and strenuous resolutions and self-sacrificing deeds. Prayers which are cast in the mould of God’s own revelation of Himself will not fail of answer. True prayer catches up the promises that flutter down to us, and flings them up again like arrows.The prayer here is all built, then, on that name of Jehovah, and on what the name

involves, chiefly on the thought of God as keeping covenant and mercy. He has bound Himself in solemn, irrefragable compact, to a certain line of action. Men ‘know where to have Him,’ if we may venture on the familiar expression. He has given us a chart of His course, and He will adhere to it. Therefore we can go to Him with our prayers, so long as we keep these within the ample space of His covenant, and ourselves within its terms, by loving obedience.The petition that God’s ears might be sharpened and His eyes open to the prayer is cast in a familiar mould. It boldly transfers to Him not only the semblance of man’s form, but also the likeness of His processes of action. Hearing the cry for help precedes active intervention in the case of men’s help, and the strong imagery of the prayer conceives of similar sequence in God. But the figure is transparent, and the ‘anthropomorphism’ so plain that no mistakes can arise in its interpretation.�ote, too, the light touch with which the suppliant’s relation to God {‘Thy servant’} and his long-continued cry {‘day and night’} are but just brought in for a moment as pleas for a gracious hearing. The prayer is ‘for Thy servants the children of Israel,’ in which designation, as the next clauses show, the relation established by God, and not the conduct of men, is pleaded as a reason for an answer.The mention of that relation brings at once to �ehemiah’s mind the terrible unfaithfulness to it which had marked, and still continued to mark, the whole nation. So lowly confession follows [�ehemiah 1:6 - �ehemiah 1:7]. Unprofitable servants they had indeed been. The more loftily we think of our privileges, the more clearly should we discern our sins. �othing leads a true heart to such self-ashamed penitence as reflection on God’s mercy. If a man thinks that God has taken him for a servant, the thought should bow him with conscious unworthiness, not lift him in self-satisfaction. �ehemiah’s confession not only sprung from the thought of Israel’s vocation, so poorly fulfilled, but it also laid the groundwork for further petitions. It is useless to ask God to help us to repair the wastes if we do not cast out the sins which have made them. The beginning of all true healing of sorrow is confession of sins. Many promising schemes for the alleviation of national and other distresses have come to nothing because, unlike �ehemiah’ s, they did not begin with prayer, or prayed for help without acknowledging sin.And the man who is to do work for God and to get God to bless his work must not be content with acknowledging other people’s sins, but must always say, ‘We have sinned,’ and not seldom say, ‘I have sinned.’ That penitent consciousness of evil is indispensible to all who would make their fellows happier. God works with bruised reeds. The sense of individual transgression gives wonderful tenderness, patience amid gainsaying, submission in failure, dependence on God in difficulty, and lowliness in success. Without it we shall do little for ourselves or for anybody else.The prayer next reminds God of His own words [�ehemiah 1:8 - �ehemiah 1:9], freely quoted and combined from several passages {Leviticus 26:33 - Leviticus 26:45; Deuteronomy 4:25 - Deuteronomy 4:31, etc.}. The application of these passages to the then condition of things is at first sight somewhat loose, since part of the people were already restored; and the purport of the prayer is not the restoration of the remainder, but the deliverance of those already in the land from their distresses. Still, the promise gives encouragement to the prayer and is powerful with God, inasmuch as it could not be said to have been fulfilled by so incomplete a restoration as that as that at present realised. What God does must be perfectly

done; and His great word is not exhausted so long as any fuller accomplishment of it can be imagined.The reminder of the promise is clinched {v. 10} by the same appeal as formerly to the relation to Himself into which God had been pleased to bring the nation, with an added reference to former deeds, such as the Exodus, in which His strong hand had delivered them. We are always sure of an answer if we ask God not to contradict Himself. Since He has begun He will make an end. It will never be said of Him that He ‘began to build and was not able to finish.’ His past is a mirror in which we can read His future. The return from Babylon is implied in the Exodus.A reiteration of earlier words follows, with the addition that �ehemiah now binds, as it were, his single prayer in a bundle with those of the like-minded in Israel. He gathers single ears into a sheaf, which he brings as a ‘wave-offering.’ And then, in one humble little sentence at the end, he puts his only personal request. The modesty of the man is lovely. His prayer has been all for the people. Remarkably enough, there is no definite petition in it. He never once says right out what he so earnestly desires, and the absence of specific requests might be laid hold of by sceptical critics as an argument against the genuineness of the prayer. But it is rather a subtle trait, on which no forger would have been likely to hit. Sometimes silence is the very result of entire occupation of mind with a thought. He says nothing about the particular nature of his request, just because he is so full of it. But he does ask for favour in the eyes of ‘this man,’ and that he may be prospered ‘this day.’So this was his morning prayer on that eventful day, which was to settle his life’s work. The certain days of solitary meditation on his nation’s griefs had led to a resolution. He says nothing about his long brooding, his slow decision, his conflicts with lower projects of personal ambition. He ‘burns his own smoke,’ as we all should learn to do. But he asks that the capricious and potent will of the king may be inclined to grant his request. If our morning supplication is ‘Prosper Thy servant this day,’ and our purposes are for God’s glory, we need not fear facing anybody. However powerful Artaxerxes was, he was but ‘this man,’ not God. The phrase does not indicate contempt or undervaluing of the solid reality of his absolute power over �ehemiah, but simply expresses the conviction that the king, too, was a subject of God’ s, and that his heart was in the hand of Jehovah, to mould as He would. The consciousness of dependence on God and the habit of communion with Him give a man a clear sight of the limitations of earthly dignities, and a modest boldness which is equally remote from rudeness and servility.Thus prepared for whatever might be the issue of that eventful day, the young cupbearer rose from his knees, drew a long breath, and went to his work. Well for us if we go to ours, whether it be a day of crisis or of commonplace, in like fashion! Then we shall have like defence and like calmness of heart.

EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE COMME�TARY, "�EHEMIAH THE PATRIOT

�ehemiah 1:1-3

THE Book of �ehemiah is the last part of the chronicler’s narrative. Although it was not originally a separate work, we can easily see why the editor, who broke up the original volume into distinct books, divided it just where he did. An interval of

twelve or thirteen years comes between Ezra’s reformation and the events recorded in the opening of �ehemiah. Still a much longer period was passed over in silence in the middle of Ezra. [Ezra 7:1] A more important reason for the division of the narrative may be found in the introduction of a new character. The book which now bears his name is largely devoted to the actions of �ehemiah, and it commences with an autobiographical narrative, which occupies the first six chapters and part of the seventh.

�ehemiah plunges suddenly into his story, without giving us any hints of his previous history. His father, Hacaliah, is only a name to us. It was necessary to state this name in order to distinguish the writer from other men named �ehemiah. There is no reason to think that his privileged position at court indicates high family connections. The conjecture of Ewald that he owed his important and lucrative office to his personal beauty and youthful attractions is enough to account for it. His appointment to the office formerly held by Zerubbabel is no proof that he belonged to the Jewish royal family. At the despotic Persian court the king’s kindness towards a favourite servant would override all claims of princely rank. Besides, it is most improbable that we should have no hint of the Davidic descent if this had been one ground of the appointment. Eusebius and Jerome both describe �ehemiah as of the tribe of Judah. Jerome is notoriously inaccurate; Eusebius is a cautious historian, but it is not likely that in his late age-as long after �ehemiah as our age is after Thomas A Becket-he could have any trustworthy evidence beyond that of the Scriptures. The statement that the city of Jerusalem was the place of the sepulchres of his ancestors [�ehemiah 2:3] lends some plausibility to the suggestion that �ehemiah belonged to the tribe of Judah. With this we must be content.

It is more to the point to notice that, like Ezra, the younger man, whose practical energy and high authority were to further the reforms of the somewhat doctrinaire scribe, was a Jew of the exile. Once more it is in the East, far away from Jerusalem, that the impulse is found for furthering the cause of the Jews. Thus we are again reminded that wave after wave sweeps up from the Babylonian plains to give life and strength to the religious and civic restoration.

The peculiar circumstances of �ehemiah deepen our interest in his patriotic and religious work. In his case it was not the hardships of captivity that fostered the aspirations of the spiritual life, for he was in a position of personal ease and prosperity. We can scarcely think of a lot less likely to encourage the principles of patriotism and religion than that of a favourite upper servant in a foreign heathen court. The office held by �ehemiah was not one of political rank. He was a palace slave, not a minister of state like Joseph or Daniel. But among the household servants he would take a high position. The cupbearers had a special privilege of admission to the august presence of their sovereign in his most private seclusion. The king’s life was in their hands, and the wealthy enemies of a despotic sovereign would be ready enough to bribe them to poison the king, if only they proved to be corruptible. The requirement that they should first pour some wine into their own hands, and drink the sample before the king, is an indication that fear of treachery haunted the mind of an Oriental monarch, as it does the mind of a Russian czar

today. Even with this rough safeguard it was necessary to select men who could be relied upon. Thus the cup-bearers would become "favourites." At all events, it is plain that �ehemiah was regarded with peculiar favour by the king he served. �o doubt he was a faithful servant, and his fidelity in his position of trust at court was a guarantee of similar fidelity in a more responsible and far more trying office.

�ehemiah opens his story by telling us that he was in "the palace," [�ehemiah 1:1] or rather "the fortress," at Susa, the winter abode of the Persian monarchs-an Elamite city, the stupendous remains of which astonish the traveller in the present day-eighty miles east of the Tigris and within sight of the Bakhtiyari Mountains. Here was the great hall of audience, the counterpart of another at Persepolis. These two were perhaps the largest rooms in the ancient world next to that at Karnak. Thirty-six fluted columns, distributed as six rows of six columns each, slender and widely spaced, supported a roof extending two hundred feet each way. The month Chislev, in which the occurrence �ehemiah proceeds to relate happened, corresponds to parts of our �ovember and December. The name is an Assyrian and Babylonian one, and so are all the names of the months used by the Jews. Further, �ehemiah speaks of what he here narrates as happening in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, and in the next chapter he mentions a subsequent event as occurring in the month �isan [�ehemiah 2:1] in the same year. This shows that he did not reckon the year to begin at �isan, as the Jews were accustomed to reckon it. He must have followed the general Asiatic custom, which begins the year in the autumn, or else he must have regulated his dates according to the time of the King’s accession. In either case, we see how thoroughly un-Jewish the setting of his narrative is-unless a third explanation is adopted, viz., that the Jewish year, beginning in the spring, only counts from the adoption of Ezra’s edition of The Law. Be this as it may, other indications of Orientalism, derived from his court surroundings, will attract our attention in our consideration of his language later on. �o writer of the Bible reflects the influence of alien culture more clearly than �ehemiah. Outwardly, he is the most foreign Jew we meet with in Scripture. Yet in life and character he is the very ideal of a Jewish patriot. His patriotism shines, all the more splendidly because it bursts out of a foreign environment. Thus �ehemiah shows how little his dialect and the manners he exhibits can be taken as the gauge of a man’s true life.

�ehemiah states that, while he was thus at Susa, in winter residence with the court, one of his brethren, named Hanani, together with certain men of Judah, came to him. [�ehemiah 1:2] The language here used will admit of our regarding Hanani as only a more or less distant relative of the cupbearer, but a later reference to him at Jerusalem as "my brother Hanani" [�ehemiah 7:2] shows that his own brother is meant.

Josephus has an especially graphic account of the incident. We have no means of discovering whether he drew it from an authentic source, but its picturesqueness may justify the insertion of it here:

"�ow there was one of those Jews who had been carried captive, who was cupbearer to King Xerxes; his name was �ehemiah. As this man was walking before

Susa, the metropolis of the Persians, he heard some strangers that were entering the city, after a long journey, speaking to one another in the Hebrew tongue, so he went to them and asked from whence they came, and when their answer was that they came from Judaea, he began to inquire of them again in what state the multitude was, and in what condition Jerusalem was, and when they replied that they were in a bad state, for that their walls were thrown down to the ground, and that the neighbouring nations did a great deal of mischief to the Jews, while in the daytime they over-ran the country and pillaged it, and in the night did them mischief, insomuch that not a few were led away captive out of the country, and out of Jerusalem itself, and that the roads were in the daytime found full of dead men. Hereupon �ehemiah shed tears, out of commiseration of the calamities of his countrymen, and, looking up to heaven, he said, ‘How long, O Lord, wilt thou overlook our nation, while it suffers so great miseries, and while we are made the prey and the spoil of all men?’ And while he staid at the gate, and lamented thus, one told him that the king was going to sit down to supper, so he made haste, and went as he was, without washing himself, to minister to the king in his office of cupbearer," etc.

Evidently �ehemiah was expressly sought out. His influence would naturally be valued. There was a large Jewish community at Susa, and �ehemiah must have enjoyed a good reputation among his people; otherwise it would have been vain for the travellers to obtain an interview with him. The eyes of these Jews were turned to the royal servant as the fellow-countryman of greatest influence at court. But �ehemiah anticipated their message and relieved them of all difficulty by questioning them about the city of their fathers. Jerusalem was hundreds of miles away across the desert; no regular method of communication kept the Babylonian colony informed of the condition of the advance guard at the ancient capital; therefore scraps of news brought by chance travellers were eagerly devoured by those who were anxious for the rare information. Plainly �ehemiah shared this anxiety. His question was quite spontaneous, and it suggests that amid the distractions of his court life his thoughts had often reverted to the ancient home of his people. If he had not been truly patriotic, be could have used some device, which his palace experience would have readily suggested, so as to divert the course of this conversation with a group of simple men from the country, and keep the painful subject in the background. He must have seen clearly that for one in his position of influence to make inquiries about a poor and distressed community was to raise expectations of assistance. But his questions were earnest and eager, because his interest was genuine.

The answers to �ehemiah’s inquiries struck him with surprise as well as grief. The shock with which he received them reminds us of Ezra’s startled horror when the lax practices of the Jewish leaders were reported to him, although the trained court official did not display the abandonment of emotion which was seen in the student suddenly plunged into the vortex of public life and unprepared for one of those dread surprises which men of the world drill themselves to face with comparative calmness.

We must now examine the news that surprised and distressed �ehemiah. His brother and the other travellers from Jerusalem inform him that the descendants of the returned captives, the residents of Jerusalem, "are in great affliction and reproach" and also that the city walls have been broken down and the gates burnt. The description of the defenceless and dishonoured state of the city is what most strikes �ehemiah. �ow the question is to what calamities does this report refer? According to the usual understanding, it is a description of the state of Jerusalem which resulted from the sieges of �ebuchadnezzar. But there are serious difficulties in the way of this view. �ehemiah must have known all about the tremendous events, one of the results of which was seen in the very existence of the Jewish colony of which he was a member. The inevitable consequences of that notorious disaster could not have come before him unexpectedly and as startling news. Besides, the present distress of the inhabitants is closely associated with the account of the ruin of the defences, and is even mentioned first. Is it possible that one sentence should include what was happening now, and what took place a century earlier, in a single picture of the city’s misery? The language seems to point to the action of breaking through the walls rather than to such a general demolition of them as took place when the whole city was razed to the ground by the Babylonian invaders. Lastly, the action of �ehemiah cannot be accounted for on this hypothesis. He is plunged into grief by the dreadful news, and at first he can only mourn and fast and pray.. But before long, as soon as he obtains permission from his royal master, he sets out for Jerusalem, and there his first great work is to restore the ruined walls. The connection of events shows that it is the information brought to him by Hanani and the other Jews from Jerusalem that rouses him to proceed to the city. All this points to some very recent troubles which were previously unknown to �ehemiah. Can we find any indication of those troubles elsewhere?

The opening scene in the patriotic career of �ehemiah exactly fits in with the events which came under our consideration in the previous chapter. There we saw that the opposition to the Jews which is recorded as early as Ezra 4:1-24, but attributed to the reign of an "Artaxerxes," must have been carried into effect under Artaxerxes Longimanus-�ehemiah’s master. This must have been subsequent to the mission of Ezra in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, as Ezra makes no mention of its distressful consequences. The news reached �ehemiah in the twentieth year of the same reign. Therefore the mischief must have been wrought some time during the intervening thirteen years. We have no history of that period. But the glimpse of its most gloomy experiences afforded by the detached paragraph in Ezra 4:1-24, exactly fits in with the description of the resulting condition of Jerusalem in the Book of �ehemiah. This will fully account for �ehemiah’s surprise and grief; it will also throw a flood of light on his character and subsequent action. If he had only been roused to repair the ravages of the old Babylonian invasions, there would have been nothing very courageous in his undertaking. Babylon itself had been overthrown, and the enemy of Babylon was now in power. Anything tending to obliterate the destructive glory of the old fallen empire might be accepted with favour by the Persian ruler. But the case is quite altered when we think of the more recent events. The very work �ehemiah was to undertake had been attempted but a few years before, and it had failed miserably. The rebuilding of the walls had then excited the jealousy of

neighbouring peoples, and their gross misrepresentations had resulted in an official prohibition of the work. This prohibition, however, had only been executed by acts of violence, sanctioned by the government. Worse than all else, it was from the very Artaxerxes whom �ehemiah served that the sanction had been obtained. He was an easy-going sovereign, readily accessible to the advice of his ministers; in the earlier part of his reign he showed remarkable favour towards the Jews, when he equipped and despatched Ezra on his great expedition, and it is likely enough that in the pressure of his multitudinous affairs the King would soon forget his unfavourable despatch. �evertheless he was an absolute monarch, and the lives of his subjects were in his hands. For a personal attendant of such a sovereign to show sympathy with a city that had come under his disapproval was a very risky thing. �ehemiah may have felt this while he was hiding his grief from Artaxerxes. But if so, his frank confession at the first opportunity reflects all the more credit on his patriotism and the courage with which he supported it.

Patriotism is the most prominent principle in �ehemiah’s conduct. Deeper considerations emerge later, especially after he has come under the influence of an enthusiastic religious teacher in the person of Ezra. But at first it is the city of his fathers that moves his heart. He is particularly distressed at its desolate condition, because the burial-place of his ancestors is there. The great anxiety of the Jews about the bodies of their dead, and their horror of the exposure of a corpse, made them look with peculiar concern on the tombs of their people. In sharing the sentiments that spring out of the habits of his people in this respect, �ehemiah gives a specific turn to his patriotism. He longs to guard and honour the last resting-place of his people; he would hear of any outrage on the city where their sepulchres are with the greatest distress. Thus filial piety mingles with patriotism, and the patriotism itself is localised, like that of the Greeks, and directed to the interests of a single city. �ehemiah here represents a different attitude from that of Mordecai. It is not the Jew that he thinks of in the first instance, but Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is dear to him primarily, not because of his kinsmen who are living there, but because it is the city of his fathers’ sepulchres, the city of the great past. Still the strongest feelings are always personal. Patriotism loves the very soil of the fatherland, but the depth and strength of the passion spring from association with an affection for the people that inhabit it. Without this, patriotism degenerates into a flimsy sentiment. At Jerusalem �ehemiah develops a deep personal interest in the citizens. Even on the Susa acropolis, where the very names of these people are unknown to him, the thought of his ancestry gives a sanctity to the far-off city. Such a thought is enlarging and purifying. It lifts a man out of petty personal concerns; it gives him unselfish sympathies it prepares demands for sacrifice and service. Thus, while the mock patriotism which cares only for glory and national aggrandisement is nothing but a vulgar product of enlarged selfishness, the true patriotism that awakens large human sympathies is profoundly unselfish, and shows itself to be a part of the very religion of a devoted man.

BI 1-11, "The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah.

The royal cup-bearer

I. Let us notice the words alluded to by Nehemiah. They were as follows: “And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year,” etc.

1. You observe that the time and the place of this conversation are given. It was at Shushan or Susa, the winter residence of the King of Persia.

2. There are places and periods that stand out more prominently than others in the history of most of us. “It came to pass in the month Chisleu,” etc.

3. The particular matter referred to was a conversation he had with a kinsman of his, and with other co-religionists lately come from Palestine, respecting the state of the Jews there, “and concerning Jerusalem.” Nehemiah was not indifferent to his country’s condition. It was a twofold question that he put.

(1) He wanted to know how it had fared with the Hebrews—“the delivered ones,” “the escaped ones.”

(2) The other aspect of the question here put by Nehemiah has reference to Jerusalem. An exiled Londoner or Parisian’s love for London or Paris would not, we may be sure, be deeper, stronger than that which Nehemiah must have had for the promised land, and for “the city, the place of his fathers’ sepulchres.” As was to be expected, he asked for information” concerning Jerusalem.” It has been well said, “No place is so strong, no building so grand, no wall so firm, that sin cannot undermine and overthrow it.” Let no man trust in ceremonies, or sacred-houses, or sacred traditions, so long as his heart is far from God, and his life is not in accord with His righteous creed.

II. Let us notice the emotion of Nehemiah on hearing the tidings alluded to. “I sat down and wept,” he says, “and mourned certain days, and fasted.” He also adds, “and prayed before the God of heaven.” He wept. Nor was it weak or unmanly for him to do so. “His was the tear most sacred shed for others’ pain.” To weep at trifles, or at fictitious sorrows, may be effeminate; but ‘twas no trifle, no imaginary sorrow, that now drew tears from Nehemiah.

1. His grief was further manifested by lamentation and fasting.

2. It was a profound grief which seized him.

3. It was a somewhat prolonged as well as profound grief. It lasted, at any rate, certain days.

4. It was a patriot’s grief.

5. Again, it was a penitent grief.

6. Nehemiah’s grief reminds us of another and yet more touching spectacle, the tears which Jesus shed over Jerusalem.

“And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it,” etc.

III. In the third place, let us look at the prayer which Nehemiah was thus prompted to offer, Let us learn that the province of prayer is not restricted to things spiritual. It embraces the affairs of everyday life, and all lawful undertakings great and small. (T. Rowson.)

The typical patriot

Nehemiah the civilian, as contrasted with Ezra the ecclesiastic, is brought before us in this book as the patriot deliverer of his people.

I. The typical patriot Is purely disinterested in principle. Personal ambition is sunk in desire for public good. Selfish motives are abandoned for generous impulses.

1. This does not prevent his rising to a position of honour even in an alien country. A good man is valued anywhere. Fidelity to convictions ever commands respect apart from the merit of the convictions themselves. Honour from an alien chief can only be allowed to the true patriot conditionally—

(1) That no vital principle is sacrificed. Nehemiah evidently remained true to his nation and loyal to his God.

(2) That it is made subservient to the interests of his people. At Shushan Nehemiah was really serving them better than he could do at Jerusalem until summoned there by Divine Providence. He was learning the principles of government at the centre of the most powerful government in the world. He had immediate access to the monarch himself.

2. He is always ready to surrender personal honour for his people’s good—

(1) If by so doing he can be of more service to his brethren. Self-sacrifice is the grand test of all pretension.

(2) If personal honour be associated with his people’s oppression. Learn—

1. By obedience we make the most stubborn laws of nature our servants.

2. By patience foes may be transformed into friends.

3. By the discipline of adversity the foundations of prosperity are laid.

II. The typal patriot is large-hearted in his sympathies.

1. He manifests a real interest in the condition of his country (verse 2). The words imply—

(1) That Nehemiah was not a passive listener to the rehearsal of his people’s affliction.

(2) That he entered into particulars and was most minute in his inquiries. They who have no intention of practical sympathy are careful to elicit no tales of sorrow.

2. He takes upon himself the burden of his country’s woes (verse 4).

III. The typal patriot recognises divine sovereignty in human affairs.

1. By accepting the existence and authority of the King of kings. Not only as—

(1) A dogma, but also as—

(2) A regulative principle. “O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God.”

2. By regarding Divine aid as superior to all other.

(1) As the most powerful that can be obtained.

(2) As controlling all other aid.

Nehemiah seeks Divine assistance in urging his suit in his approaching interview with

the king—

(a) That he may reach the monarch’s will by the most accessible channel.

(b) That he may approach him at the most accessible moment.

(c) That he may urge his request in the most prevalent form.

3. By regarding Divine aid as available through prayer. Nehemiah’s prayer is one of the model prayers of the Bible, as—

(1) Reverent in its attitude towards God (verse 5).

(2) Persistent in pressing its suit (verse 6).

(3) Penitent in its tone and temper (verses 6, 7).

(4) Scriptural in its argument (verses 8, 9).

(5) Childlike in its spirit (vats. 10, 11).

(6) Definite in its aim (verse 11).

Learn—

1. Nehemiah is a type of Him who “though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor,” etc.

2. Intercessory prayer is the inspiration and the evidence of true patriotism.

3. Divine interposition is the safest to invoke in national crises. (W. H. Booth.)

The pious patriot

He was willing, moreover, to make no little sacrifice in the cause of patriotism. Even in asking the king for leave of absence on such a mission, he was probably risking the royal displeasure. No one could well predict how an Oriental despot would be likely to regard such a request. All might depend on the whim or caprice of the moment. That Nehemiah should wish to exchange Susa for Jerusalem—that he should desire to quit, even for a time, the sunlight of the royal presence which was condescending to shine upon him—might possibly be viewed as an insult. The very fact that he was a favourite might only increase the royal irritation. A tyrant likes his pets to appreciate their privileges; and Nehemiah, by asking for leave of absence, might only lose the royal favour and be deposed from his office. Then, again, even if his request should be granted, he would have to sacrifice for a time all the luxury and ease of his present position; he would have to subject himself to toil and danger; he would have to face the arduous journey between Susa and Jerusalem; and then, after arriving in the city of his fathers, he would have to confront the hostility of the surrounding tribes, and might even have to exchange the courtier’s robes for the soldier’s armour. But all these sacrifices Nehemiah was prepared to make in the cause of patriotism. His court life had not enervated his spirit. An intelligent and manly piety does not destroy or despise any of the natural affections. There is, indeed, a “pietism” which makes light of the ties of home and kindred, which disparages patriotism, as if it were inconsistent with the universal love inspired by the gospel, or which even ventures to taboo politics as a worldly region which a spiritual man ought rather to avoid. Let us beware of this false spirituality. The world of natural human relationships is God’s world, and not the devil’s; and if the devil has intruded into it, there is all the more need that it should be occupied by the earnest soldiers of

God. Pietism may say, “Never mind the condition of the walls of Jerusalem: souls are the grand concern.” But, in point of fact, the condition of walls may sometimes affect the condition of souls. Things external often stand in subtle relation to things spiritual. The body influences the mind; and the outward conditions of national existence may stand in the closest connection with the religious life of a people. Besides, it Ii natural that we should love our own country with a special affection; and a true religion does not destroy but consecrates all natural attachments. On the other hand, there are many politicians who are no patriots, and there is also a patriotism in which there is no godliness, There are men who take the keenest interest in politics merely because it furnishes an arena for the exercise of their faculties, the display of their talents, and the furtherance of their ambitions. And there are also true patriots—real lovers of their country—who yet never recognise the hand of God in national history, who never think of praying to God in connection with their plans, or of submitting their political projects and methods to the test of His will. Now, if a man’s patriotism is his only religion, this is doubtless better than that his “god” should be his “belly,” and that he should “glory in his shame.” But still, this patriotism in which there is no regard for God is fraught with danger. For the grand and prime demand on every one of us is that we be the servants of the Most High, the soldiers of Christ, the loyal subjects of the Divine kingdom. And then it is our bounden duty to serve God in and through all our natural pursuits, affections, and relationships, and, amongst other things, to bring all our political theories, aims, and methods into the light of Christ and of His Spirit. We want, both in the Church and in the commonwealth, men and women in whom, as in Nehemiah of old, piety and patriotism are blended and intertwined. (T. C. Finlayson.)

Divine purposes working through providence

I. Here is eminent piety in a most unlikely place (Neh_1:1).

1. Palaces are not generally favourable to piety—

(1) Because unrestrained liberty usually degenerates into license and lavish luxury into licentiousness. Court morals are proverbially corrupt.

(2) Because religion does not flourish amidst human pomp and the outward symbols of pride. A palace is, above all others, a theatre of human exaltation and proud display.

(3) Because the commands of a sovereign are liable to clash with the mandates of Jehovah.

2. Piety is not impossible even in a palace—

(1) Inasmuch as God will protect them who honour Him. If God has placed His servant in the palace to do His work, He will keep him there until the work is done.

(2) Inasmuch as many eminent examples are recorded in Scripture. Not only Nehemiah, but Moses, Joseph, Obadiah, and Daniel. Learn—

1. Eminent piety does not depend upon the accidentals of a man’s social position.

2. Exalted positions are less desirable than they appear.

3. The most desirable station in life is that in which we can serve God to the best advantage.

II. Here is an event apparently trifling leading to results of the greatest magnitude (verse 2).

1. The most trivial event may lead to the most momentous issues. The oak is contained in the acorn; the prairie is fired by a spark; a nation is plunged into war as the result of a jest. Many a quiet conversation has led to world-wide revolutions.

2. Nothing is therefore trivial to a wise man.

Learn—

1. Every detail in a good man’s life is part of a Divine plan.

2. To avoid crossing the Divine purpose and thwarting the Divine plan we must do all to the glory of God.

III. Here is a startling summons of a most unexpected character. Although no direct appeal was made, Nehemiah as truly heard the Divine call as Samuel the voice in the darkness, or Paul the voice of the vision, “Come over to Macedonia.”

1. Here is an appeal for sympathy and help—not the less powerful because indirect. Mute appeals are often the most eloquent. AEschylus appealing for the life of his brother by holding up the stump of the arm he had lost in the service of his country. The high-priest in the holy place sprinkled the blood seven times without speaking. This appeal was—

(1) The cry of humanity appealing to human sympathies.

(2) The cry of brotherhood appealing to his kinship.

(3) The cry of fatherland appealing to his patriotism.

(4) The call of God.

2. Here is a summons which involved great sacrifice. Love never counts the cost. Sacrifice is its glory. Sincerity always distinguished from hypocrisy by this test.

3. Here is an unexpected summons promptly obeyed.

Learn—

1. Life is full of surprises, and the tenure of ease uncertain.

2. The good man is prepared to follow the leadings of providence without hesitation and at any cost.

IV. Here is a saviour raised up in a most unlooked-for quarter.

1. God is ever training His agents for the work which He means them to accomplish. Nehemiah, Joseph, Moses, David, Cyrus, Paul, Luther, Wesley, and many others.

2. At the proper time God will bring His agents into contact with their life-work.

3. The qualifications of God’s agents are not always recognised at first.

Learn—

1. God uses the most unlikely agents.

2. God leads in the most unlooked-for ways.

3. God’s redemptive scheme is the most incomprehensible of all mysteries.

V. Here is a picture of the demoralising and dismantling tendency of sin, alike in cities

and in souls.

1. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were demoralised: “In great affliction and reproach.” Long captivity and dependence had enervated them. Powers not used lapse into impotence. Sin cherished withers moral force.

2. The battlements of Jerusalem were dismantled. Thus does sin ever destroy defences and throw down battlements, leaving souls at the mercy of destructive forces which lead to eternal shame.

Learn—

1. Sin reveals its deadly nature in its direful consequences even in this life.

2. These consequences are designed to act as warnings to unwary souls.

3. They suggest still more awful penalties in that world where judgment is untempered by mercy. (W. H. Booth.)

The exile

Nothing is here said of the parentage or early training of Nehemiah. We may suppose he grew up in a pious home, where daily prayers, and instructions, and acts of godliness were imbued with deep religious feeling. The early days of the future reformer were perhaps spent in listening to the recital of many an endeared memory of the land of Judah, and his young heart was probably taught to beat high with hope of the restoration of his people to their covenant inheritance.

I. The situation he occupied. The palace at Shushan was one of the most magnificent in the ancient world. The site of its ruins has been identified by modern travellers, and here large blocks of marble, with other fragments of splendid edifices, are often dug up—the relics of a grandeur that has long since passed away. The place of his abode offered many attractions to captivate a youthful mind. There were in the streets of that vast city the splendour and bustle of Oriental life. There might seem in all this “lust of the eye and pride of life” ominous danger to youthful piety. But it is a wonderful power, the grace of God in the human heart. It is marvellous in the souls it selects for saving change, in the places where it operates, and in the triumphs it achieves. Often it appears wanting in those who seem most favourably situated for its possession, while it reigns in hearts where it might seem impossible for it to live and grow. And in him God made the palace of a heathen prince the nursery and sanctuary of an eminent servant of His cause. In view of this, let none among us allege that their situation or circumstances render it impracticable for them to cultivate religion or abound in well-doing. Men may rush into temptation in their earthly business, and thereby raise up invincible barriers to the exercise of piety; but God, by His providence, never places any man in a situation where it is impossible for him to love and obey Him. If you are where God has placed you, be sure you may be, and do, what God requires you. In every situation of life there is enough to test the sincerity of faith in things unseen.

II. The spirit he displayed. It was a spirit of tender interest for the good of Jerusalem. The subjects of inquiry show the spirit of the man. He was living in ease and affluence himself, but he could not forget he was “of the stock of Israel,” and he felt, therefore, the prosperity of religion bound up with that feeble remnant. He might have seen couriers arrive at the royal palace from distant regions, bearing tidings of fresh victories gained by Persian armies, and of new countries subjected to the Persian crown, and yet not be

greatly moved by the intelligence; but the arrival of these fellow-saints stirred up his spirit within him to inquire concerning the state of the Church in the land of his fathers. Do we not see here that it is the history and condition of the cause of truth on earth which interests the wise and good? They may not, indeed, be unaffected by events which concern the welfare of mankind and illustrate the wisdom of God in His providence; but it is especially the progress of the kingdom of grace that engages the attention of its true subjects. It was a spirit of deep sorrow for the distress of his people in Judah.

III. The exercises in which he engaged. Nehemiah “fasted and prayed.” (W. Ritchie.)

The use of a great purpose

To a thoughtful mind there is much interest in the contemplation of the circumstances under which the great purpose of a life first rise into distinctness before the mind of one whose energies, henceforth, are to be used for his country and his God, and whose example stands before us as a noble incentive to steadfastness of purpose and courage in the performance of duty. (Scenes from the Life of Nehemiah.)

Piety in unexpected places

Fine gold has often been found under e, barren and unpromising surface. Rare jewels have been found in the crevices of rocks and in the pebbly beds of rivers. Exquisite flower’s have peeped forth from the ledge of a stupendous Alpine rock, and have breathed their sweetness amid a wilderness of ice and snow. Palm-trees have lifted up their tall and elegant stems, adorned at the summit with long pendant leaves and enriched with nourishing fruit, in the midst of the sandy desert, and their life has been sustained by a hidden well of springing water at their root. This has often been the case with God’s children—Joseph, Obadiah, saints in Caesar’s household. Here Nehemiah in the court of one of the most luxurious eastern princes. (J. M. Randall.)

Nehemiah and his contempories

Nehemiah flourished four centuries before Christ. When consuls and dictators were beginning to play an important part in Roman politics; when Xenophon and Herodotus were historians and Phidias was sculptor; when Euripides, Sophocles, and Aristophanes wrote tragedy and comedy; when Socrates taught philosophy and Pericles was prime minister at Athens; and when the western nations of Europe were sunk in savage barbarism, Nehemiah was the devout cup-bearer at Shushan. We are not told from what tribe he sprang. His grandfather had been taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar; his father was born and educated at Babylon. Probably the beauty of his person and the sweetness of his manners, the extensive range of his intellect, and the integrity of his character, recommended Nehemiah to royal favour. (J. M. Randall.)

I asked them concerning the Jews . . . and concerning Jerusalem.

Careful inquiry helpful to philanthropic effort

Few portions of Scripture set forth more clearly than the Book of Nehemiah the power of

one man to do great things for God when God is with him. With an earnest desire to work for God, Nehemiah first sought to gain accurate information, from a reliable source, both as to the need that existed and the nature of the work that had to be done. Careful inquiry respecting the field of any projected effort will often reveal much of which we had previously but little conception. This should not dishearten us, however, for we ought rather to remember that the deeper the darkness and degradation of those whom we seek to reach, the more needful is it to bring them under the enlightening and elevating power of the gospel of Christ. (W. P. Lockhart.)

Man’s love for the land of his birth

Mr. Christie Murray, writing of the old Australian settlers, relates an incident to show how, after a long life of exile, they still pine for home and England. When his ship left Plymouth Sound a good deal of mud adhered to the anchor. After it was dried he broke off a bit, declaring, half in jest and half in earnest, that this piece of English earth should go with him around the world. In Australia he showed it to a white-haired ranchman among the hills. The old man eyed it wistfully. “Give it to me,” he said at last. “You will see old England again; I never shall. I would value that bit of earth more than diamonds.” Mr. Murray gave it to him, and continued his journey. When he came back, months later, he found that the old man had ridden more than a hundred miles to a settlement to buy a gay little plush stand and a glass case in which to preserve his treasure. De Maistre, describing the hut of the Moravian missionary in the most northern human settlement within the Arctic circle, says that he observed, suspended over the fireplace like a holy relic, a piece of rough, unbarked wood. He looked at it curiously. The Dane touched it with reverence. “It is a bit of the old oak-tree at home,” he said, his eyes full of tears. Nothing can be more real than that clinging in the heart of a man to the land of his birth. It may be of all countries in the world the poorest, the least beautiful, the most insignificant. But it is his own, and if he is a genuine man the trifle which tells him of it, though he stands in a king’s palace, will speak to him as with the power of his mother’s voice. (Christian Age.)

The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.—

Walls and gates

What, then, are the “walls and gates” of the New Testament? The Church is now catholic, and no longer national. It is not now a civil polity and the necessities of a civil community that determine the nature of these “walls and gates.” Yet there are some things of prime importance, like the walls and gates of Jerusalem.

I. The sacred observance of the Lord’s day. All history shows that whenever and wherever the Sabbath is overthrown the Church is perilously exposed, not only to decay, but even to extinction.

II. A numerous congregation of attendants upon the ordinances and worship of the church.

III. Sabbath schools are “the gates” of our jerusalem.

IV. The liberality and self-sacrifice of God’s people. (J. A. Lefevre, D. D.)

Interest in Jerusalem

I. The story of jerusalem throws light upon god’s moral government. Great privileges involve great responsibilities. National sin brings national ruin. Nations are rewarded and punished in this world.

II. It is a mark of real piety to be zealous for the cause and kingdom of God. How bitterly do Christians mourn over the wickedness around them, and the severe conflict they have to maintain in their own breasts.

III. Every Christian has, more or less, to tread a solitary path, and his deepest sorrows are frequently those which he cannot communicate to the nearest and dearest on earth. Who would have thought that when his attendance upon the king was over for the day, Nehemiah would hasten to his chamber, weep bitter tears of grief, and mourn and pray? (J. M. Randall.)

Jerusalem, the holy

city:—Thoroughly to realise the sad tidings brought to Nehemiah, we must briefly recall the former history of Jerusalem. No city possesses so deep and thrilling an interest. Other cities may boast of a higher antiquity. Thebes and Nineveh may go back even to the repeopling of the world after the deluge. Other cities may claim a broader area, a more numerous population, a more extended commerce. Other cities may claim to be the centres of a far greater earthly dominion than was ever accorded to David. But whether in the past, the present, or the future, them is no interest like that which attaches to the holy city. (J. M. Randall.)

Sin ruins a kingdom

I. If there be a moral governor of the universe sin must provoke him.

II. If sin provoke God He is able to punish it.

III. Bodies of men punishable in this world only.

IV. There is a tendency in the very nature of sin to injure and ruin a country.

V. God’s dealings with guilty nations are confirmed both by His word and all human history.

VI. God always gives previous intimation of his coming to judge a nation.

VII. If God favoured a nation with an intimation of His will, Their sins are aggravated by means of this light.

VIII. When God has distinguished a people by singular instances of his favour, that people will be proportionally criminal unless they distinguish themselves by their devotedness to Him.

IX. When a nation is under corrections of the almighty, they are eminently sinful if they disregard the tokens of His wrath.

X. Shameless sinning is a sure proof of general corruption. (W. Jay.)

The walls of Jerusalem

What do we know of these walls previous to the time of Nehemiah? The city of Jerusalem passed into the hands of the Jews under David. He wrested the rocky stronghold of Zion, which commands Jerusalem, from the Canaanitish tribe of the Jebusites. He made it the capital of his kingdom. To secure his position David threw a wall round the entire city, including the fortress of Zion. In the reign of Solomon (B.C. 1016-976) this wall was greatly strengthened. Very large towers were erected at intervals upon it, and its height was increased. Probably also some outlying parts of the city were now comprised within its circuit. For nearly two centuries this wall remained intact. Jerusalem sustained several sieges; but it was only in the reign of Amaziah, in B.C. 826, that a breach was made in the fortifications. Jehoash, the king of Israel, “ brake down the wall of Jerusalem, from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits” (2Ki_14:13). Through this gap in the wall, Josephus tells us, the victorious Jehoash drove his chariot into Jerusalem, leading Amaziah captive with him. Uzziah (B.C. 808) the succeeding king of Judah, was a prosperous and enterprising prince. He occupied himself for a large portion of his life in the improvement of his capital. He repaired the breach made by Jehoash, and built additional towers. Other portions of the walls that had been suffered to fall into decay were renewed. He was an artillerist; he equipped the walls and their towers with powerful engines for hurling stones and other missiles against besiegers. Jothan, his son (B.C. 756), also strengthened the walls by building new massive towers. The care which had been expended upon the fortifications of the city by successive kings, for so long a period, bore memorable fruit in the reign of Hezekiah. The tide of Assyrian invasion which then swept over Palestine, and which overwhelmed for ever the ten tribes of Israel, met with a check before the fortress of Jerusalem. In prospect of this invasion Hezekiah had repaired the walls wherever they had become dilapidated, and had erected an additional wall. While the city was invested the mysterious plague came upon the camp of the Assyrians, which swept off myriads of them in a single night. They were content to retire (B.C. 710) with a tribute paid by Hezekiah; the city itself, however, remained uncaptured. Manasseh, after his repentance (B.C. 677-642), paid attention to the fortifications of the city. “He did not only,” says Josephus, “repair the old walls with great diligence, but added another wall to the former. He built, also, very lofty towers, and the garrisoned places before the city he strengthened not only in other respects, but with provisions of all sorts that they wanted.” It was nearly forty years later that the series of calamities commenced which lasted for twenty years, and which culminated in the complete overthrow of this illustrious city. In B.C. 606 Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem, and after threatening Jehoiakim, the king, with captivity, left him in possession of his throne. He appeared before the city again nine years later; and Jehoiachin, who had succeeded his father Jehoiakim, surrendered Jerusalem to him with scarcely a struggle. Nebuchadnezzar carried him off with him to Babylon, and placed his uncle Zedekiah upon the throne in Jerusalem. Six years after this Zedekiah rebelled against Babylon, and after a siege of a year and a half, the severest it had undergone since it had been a Jewish city, a breach was made in the wall of Jerusalem, through which the Babylonian army poured into the city. Zedekiah and most of the people were transferred to Babylon. The royal palace, the temple, and all the principal buildings were burned, and the stately and massive walls were levelled to the ground, their circuit being only traceable by the vast heaps of rubbish left by the devastators. To restore these famous walls, to perform once more the work of David and Solomon and their successors, to reproduce in a few weeks the labour of centuries, this was the task which lay before Nehemiah. But what

was their size? What were the -particulars of the work undertaken by Nehemiah? The city of Jerusalem is not at the present time a great city. The circumference of the modern wails is two and a half miles; and while the ancient walls would not in many portions coincide with the present, nevertheless the total circuit of the old walls would not greatly differ in length from those of the present time. It has been stated by the eminent architect, Mr. Ferguson, in Dr. Smith’s “Dictionary of the Bible,” that the area within the old walls was never more than one hundred and eighty acres; and he remarks, by way of comparison, that the building known as the Great Exhibition of 1851 covered eighteen acres, or a tenth part of the area of ancient Jerusalem. From this estimate it will be seen that the city was one of moderate dimensions. We must remember also that here and there portions of the wall were left standing. The foundations, too, would remain, throughout the entire circuit, as they originally were. The object of the invaders would be to render the fortifications incapable of serving any longer as a defence to the inhabitants; and this object would be gained without disturbing the foundations of the walls. The stones and rabble of which they had been built were not carried to a distance, but lay in heaps ready to the hands of the builders. This material would not, however, be available in every case. The limestone around Jerusalem, which was used in the construction of the important buildings, when exposed to fire (as many parts of the wall had been) rapidly disintegrated. It resembled the granite of which Chicago was built, and which crumbled to dust in the great fire which destroyed that city a few years since. This is the point of the taunt uttered by Sanballat (Neh_4:2): “Will these Jews revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?” (A. J. Griffith.)

City walls important

In the solicitude of Nehemiah over the ruined condition of the walls of Jerusalem we have brought into prominence an element in ancient national life which it is useful to understand, and which is the foundation and keystone of Nehemiah’s subsequent action. It was the walls that made the nation in those days. The law which then prevailed ripen the face of the earth was the law of might. A town of any size was at the mercy of every roving, plundering horde, if it were unfortified. When once it was surrounded with strong walls, it became possible for the citizens to accumulate property, enact laws for the order and well-being of the citizens, and to elect magistrates to carry these laws into effect. With their erection dated the commencement of civic life. Where the city was large, the citizens became a nation. The Babylonian nation, and, earlier, the Ninevite people, meant really the citizens living within the walls of the immense cities—Babylon and Nineveh. The history of Italy in the ninth century of our era illustrates this law of states. The country was overrun by the armies of rival princes, who disputed for the throne of the Lombard kingdom. The Saracens from the opposite shores of Africa were constantly landing upon the coast, and penetrating inland for the purpose of pillage and massacre. In this condition of the country the large cities were compelled again to erect their walls, which had been levelled to the ground by jealous and tyrannical kings. The great Republics of Italy, the cities which afterwards became nations in themselves, Milan, Florence, Pisa, and others, laid in this way the foundation of their subsequent greatness. “From the time,” says Sismondi in his “History of the Italian Republics,” “when towns were secured by walls, their power rapidly increased; the oppressed from all parts sought refuge in them from the oppressors; they carried with them their industry and arms to protect the walls that defended them. Everywhere they were sure of a good reception, for every city felt it had strength only in proportion to the number of its citizens; each vied with its neighbour in efforts to augment the means of defence and

in the reception given to strangers.” Of such supreme importance were the fortifications of a city to national life and progress in those ages of disorder. (A. J. Griffith.)

Protective walls

Have you ever seen a hermit crab? Some day, when you are at the seaside, you will see one. It is a crab which has no hard shell of its own, and consequently is an easy prey for sea-birds. It therefore gets possession of an empty whelk-shell, and lives in the abandoned house of the whelk, barring the door upon itself with the one great claw, which has grown twice the size of the other, apparently for the purpose. But when his crabship grows too big for his shell, it becomes as uncomfortable as a shoe that pinches, and he has to turn out to look for another. Look at him now! He in a great hurry, because he is in danger, and knows it. He wants just what Jerusalem wanted—a wall of stone and lime about him. That is what a shell is—a wall of stone and lime. Sometimes the hermit crab gets eaten up by a gull or skua before he can find another shell to suit him; sometimes he has to turn out the rightful owner from his home in order to get in himself; but he always knows that he needs a defence. It is a simple comparison; but it gives a true idea of the state of the case ha say that Jerusalem, without a stone and lime wall, was a hermit crab without a shell, surrounded by Galilean gulls and Samaritan skuas. (Sunday School.)

2 Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.

BAR�ES, "Hanani seems to have been an actual brother of Nehemiah Neh_7:2.

CLARKE, "I asked them concerning the Jews - Josephus gives a probable account of this business: “Nehemiah, being somewhere out of Susa, seeing some strangers, and hearing them converse in the Hebrew tongue, he went near; and finding they were Jews from Jerusalem, he asked them how matters went with their brethren in that city, and what was their state?” And the answer they gave him is, in substance, that recorded in the text; though with several aggravations in Josephus. - Joseph. Ant. lib. xi., c. 5.

GILL, "That Hanani, one of my brethren,.... Either in natural relation, Neh_7:2, or being a Jew of the same nation and religion; so Jarchi interprets it, one of my companions or acquaintance:

he and certain men of Judah; who came from thence to Shushan on some account or another:

and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity; who were returned from it to their own land; he inquired of their health and prosperity, in what circumstances they were, whether prosperous or adverse, whether they flourished, or were in distress:

and concerning Jerusalem; whether it was rebuilt, the houses and walls of it, and in what condition it was.

HE�RY, " Nehemiah's tender and compassionate enquiry concerning the state of the Jews in their own land, Neh_1:2. It happened that a friend and relation of his came to the court, with some other company, by whom he had an opportunity of informing himself fully how it went with the children of the captivity and what posture Jerusalem, the beloved city, was in. Nehemiah lived at ease, in honour and fulness, himself, but could not forget that he was an Israelite, nor shake off the thoughts of his brethren in distress, but in spirit (like Moses, Act_7:23) he visited them and looked upon their burdens. As distance of place did not alienate his affections from them (though they were out of sight, yet not out of mind), so neither did, 1. The dignity to which he was advanced. Though he was a great man, and probably rising higher, yet he did not think it below him to take cognizance of his brethren that were low and despised, nor was he ashamed to own his relation to them and concern for them. 2. The diversity of their sentiments from his, and the difference of their practice accordingly. Though he did not go to settle at Jerusalem himself (as we think he ought to have done now that liberty was proclaimed), but conformed to the court, and staid there, yet he did not therefore judge nor despise those that had returned, nor upbraid them as impolitic, but kindly concerned himself for them, was ready to do them all the good offices he could, and, that he might know which way to do them a kindness, asked concerning them. Note, It is lawful and good to enquire, “What news?” We should enquire especially concerning the state of the church and religion, and how it fares with the people of God; and the design of our enquiry must be, not that, like the Athenians, we may have something to talk of, but that we may know how to direct our prayers and our praises.

JAMISO� 2-3, "Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah — Hanani is called his brother (Neh_7:2). But as that term was used loosely by Jews as well as other Orientals, it is probable that no more is meant than that he was of the same family. According to Josephus, Nehemiah, while walking around the palace walls, overheard some persons conversing in the Hebrew language. Having ascertained that they had lately returned from Judea, he was informed by them, in answer to his eager inquiries, of the unfinished and desolate condition of Jerusalem, as well as the defenseless state of the returned exiles. The commissions previously given to Zerubbabel and Ezra extending only to the repair of the temple and private dwellings, the walls and gates of the city had been allowed to remain a mass of shattered ruins, as they had been laid by the Chaldean siege.

K&D, "Neh_1:2-3There came to Nehemiah Hanani, one of his brethren, and certain men from Judah.

מ�חי being �חים ,one of my brethren, might mean merely a relation of Nehemiah ,אחד

often used of more distant relations; but since Nehemiah calls Hanani חי� in Neh_7:10,

it is evident that his own brother is meant. “And I asked them concerning the Jews, and

concerning Jerusalem.” ה�הודים is further defined by וגו who had escaped, who ,ה�ליטה

were left from the captivity; those who had returned to Judah are intended, as contrasted with those who still remained in heathen, lands. In the answer, Neh_1:3, they are more precisely designated as being ”there in the province (of Judah).” With respect

to ה!דינה, see remarks on Ezr_2:1. They are said to be “in great affliction (רעה) and in

reproach.” Their affliction is more nearly defined by the accessory clause which follows: and the wall = because the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates burned with

fire. מפרצת, Pual (the intensive form), broken down, does not necessarily mean that the

whole wall was destroyed, but only portions, as appears from the subsequent description of the building of the wall, Neh 3.

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:2 That Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and [certain] men of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.

Ver. 2. That Hanani] A gracious man, according to his name ( �omine tu, quin sis natura Gratius, ac te Gratius hoc Christi gratia praestet, Amen), and zealous for his country; which indeed is a man’s self; and therefore when our Saviour used that proverb, Physician, heal thyself, the sense is, heal thy country, Luke 4:23.

One of my brethren] �ot by race, perhaps, but surely by grace and place; a Jew, and that inwardly, and therefore intrusted, after this, by �ehemiah with a great charge, �ehemiah 7:2.

Came, he and certain men of Judah] Upon some great suit, likely, for their country; because they took so long and troublesome a journey in the winter, not without that Roman resolution of Pompey in like case, �ecesse est ut eam, non ut vivam. It is necessary that I go not that I live. Whatever their business was, these men had better success than afterwards Philo the Jew and his colleagues had in their embassy to Caligula the emperor; who cast them out with contempt, and would not hear their apology against Appion of Alexandria, their deadly enemy.

And I asked them concerning the Jews] The Church was his care; neither could he enjoy aught so long as it went ill with Zion. He was even sick of the affliction of

Joseph; and glad he had got any of whom to inquire; he asked them, not out of an itch after news; but of an earnest desire to know how it fared with God’s poor people, that he might cum singulis pectus suum copulate, with singleness of purpose, having bound him, as Cyprian speaketh, rejoice with them that rejoiced, and weep with those that wept, Romans 12:15, a sure sign of a sound member.

Which were left of the captivity] One of whom he well knew to be more worth than a rabble of rebels, a world of wicked persons; as the Jews rise to say of those seventy souls that went down with Jacob into Egypt, that they were better worth than all the seventy nations of the world besides.

BE�SO�, "�ehemiah 1:2. I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped —Either concerning those who were not carried captives when others were, but remained in the land; or rather, those that had escaped out of the slavery which they had endured in Assyria, Babylon, and other strange lands. Which were left of the captivity — The remnant of those numerous captives, now returned and settled in Jerusalem, and other parts of Judea. Though �ehemiah lived in ease, honour, and affluence himself, he could not forget that he was an Israelite, nor shake off the thoughts of his brethren, or his concern for their welfare. He therefore inquires in what condition they were, and whether Jerusalem was again become a flourishing city.

WHEDO�, "2. Hanani, one of my brethren — Called emphatically his own brother in �ehemiah 7:2.

I asked them — Hence it does not seem that they were sent, as some suggest, expressly to inform �ehemiah of the sad state of things at Jerusalem.

Jews that had escaped — Those that had survived all the calamities and dangers to which the new community at Jerusalem had been exposed.

Which were left of the captivity — Or, which remained. This further defines the preceding clause, as meaning those returned exiles who were still to be found in Judea; those who remained out of multitudes that had fallen.

ELLICOTT, "(2) He and certain men of Judah.—From Judah: Hanani was �ehemiah’s own brother (�ehemiah 7:1). He and his companions came from “the province” of Judah (�ehemiah 1:3); nothing is said as to their motive in coming; and certainly there is no intimation that they had been sent to the Persian court on account of recent disturbances.

PARKER, ""Hanani, one of my brethren [comp. ch. Daniel 7:2. Hanani seems to have been an actual brother of �ehemiah], came [i.e. arrived at Susa from Jerusalem], he and certain men of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem" ( �ehemiah 1:2).

What do we know of Hanani? History is full of nobodies. The story of human life is a story of obscurities. It is the nobodies that create the renown of the great men, and yet the great men treat the nobodies as so many mats on which to wipe their feet Hanani was a very ordinary man—historically viewed he is indeed nowhere. This is probably about the only occasion upon which his name occurs, and yet that man brought a torch and set fire to a nobler life; and that is what we may do: we can relate the difficulty of things to greater men than ourselves—we can drop a story into their ears, we can tell what we have seen and heard and felt and experienced. We know not to whom we are speaking, and no man can measure the full effect of his own words. If, therefore, we are nobodies in ourselves, yet if we confine our attention to those things we know, we are powerful in proportion as we keep within the limit of knowledge. A weak Prayer of Manasseh , an intellectually weak Prayer of Manasseh , keeping himself within the line of facts which he can personally attest, is more powerful than a far nobler intellect than his own, that is prone to overstep its own boundaries, and to trespass upon fields whose entrance is forbidden. The difficulty with some people is this—that they will not tell a plain straightforward tale of facts. They are not unwilling to go to a meeting and recite verses of somebody else"s poetry, and that they call contributing a quota to the entertainment. If you would simply tell the plain straightforward history of your own heart, you would find that assemblies would melt under your pathos. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." What do you know about the great truths that gather round the name of Christ? What have you felt of the power of the gospel? What have been your resources and defences in the day of temptation? How did you answer the devil when he fell back before you, blanched and vanquished? If you would tell these things you would be amongst the best preachers—speaking naturally, pathetically, really, tenderly, and many a Prayer of Manasseh , far greater than you are, personally, might be set aflame from your simple saying.

Let the young man take a hint from that fact. Where you can, drop a word: if it is only one word so much the better. Rest assured of this—let me fall back on no authority that may not have grown out of my own varied experience—that it is better to speak one word than to speak a hundred. Keep within your own knowledge, as the poor man did whose eyes had been recovered. There were decoy-ducks that wanted to lead him off into fields adjacent, and he said, "�o, no." They said, "We do not know who this man is who has cured your eyes (we say apparently, we do not say really), we never heard of him, he does not belong to our sect, he is not a member of our club, he is not marked with our chalk—we do not know this fellow." He said, "Why, here is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence he Isaiah , and yet he hath opened mine eyes! Whether he be a sinner or not, I know not; one thing I know, whereas I was blind, now I see." And with that one word, he cut their backs into ridges, flogged them all, and drove them out of his presence. Stand to what you know, however simple the story. You may find in the long run that even a stone picked out of a brook may fell a giant and kill him.

Hanani was nobody: he had a hearer in �ehemiah , who was an army himself. He set fire to the right sort of Prayer of Manasseh , and what that man did will appear

as we proceed in this vivid and stimulating story.

"I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped."

How indestructible is love! "I am in favour with great Artaxerxes—I am cupbearer to the king—the king likes me—the king speaks familiarly to me—my bread is buttered on both sides for life—I will not ask this envoy who has come to Persia anything about the Jews; I will forget the past, I will live in the sunnier present." Was it so that �ehemiah spoke? �o, he spoke very softly; his was a wonderful voice,—there was a rare power of penetration in that whisper of his. He hardly speaks above his breath, yet his breath searches Hanani through and through. He says, "How about the Jews, my brethren, and about those that escaped—the poor remnant; and how about the dear old city; and what about Zion, loved of God? Have you heard anything; can you tell me anything?" This is the indestructibleness of love. If you had had a child in that great crisis of history whose life had been in peril, whom you had not seen for dreary months, you could not have asked more tenderly about the child"s life than �ehemiah the cupbearer of the Persian king asked about Zion and the places of the dear old footprints. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning."

Unless we have enthusiasm we can have no progress. If you belong to a church, and do not love every inch of the old walls, why, then there is no pith in you. Let us have enthusiasm and rapturous attachment to persons, places, ideas, programmes. Let every heart have a Zion for which it would die. �ehemiah had passion in his heart, enthusiasm in his blood; a man of fine, high, keen temper, and the old old days were singing in the chambers of his memory. When he saw anybody from the old place, he felt they were sacred because of the air they had last breathed, and he asked from them tidings of the things that were dearest to his heart. Would to God that the Church of Christ would recover its enthusiasm—its deep, pathetic, tender love of sacred things; we should now and then hear its voice above a whimper; now and then the loudest thunder in the air would be issuing from the Church, singing proudly its holy anthem,—rapturously its great majestic paean.

LA�GE, "�ehemiah 1:2. �ehemiah is informed of the sad condition of Jerusalem and the colony of Jews in Judea by Hanani and others. His words are Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah,etc. Hanani was literally brother to �ehemiah, as we see from �ehemiah 7:1. He afterward was appointed one of the assistant governors of Jerusalem by �ehemiah ( �ehemiah 7:2). He is not to be confounded with Hanani, a priest, mentioned in �ehemiah 12:36, and (perhaps the same) in Ezra 10:20. Of Judah may be read from Judah as denoting place rather than tribal distinction. The words would thus refer to the verb “came,” and naturally introduce �ehemiah’s question. That the colony was called “Judah,” see �ehemiah 2:7.

�ehemiah asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. Heb. happelétah asher nisharu min hashshevi (lit. “the deliverance which were left over from the captivity”). The abstract is used

as a concrete collective noun. Although the greater part of the Jews preferred to live in the land to which their ancestors had been carried captive, yet to the pious heart those who returned to the old country were recognized as the “deliverance,” or the “delivered ones,” “escaped ones.” The journey from Jerusalem to Susa by Tadmor or by Tiphsah is over a thousand miles long, and at the usual rate of Oriental travelling would take at least45 days. With the natural causes to retard so long a journey, we may safely call it a two months’ travel. Ezra, with his caravan, was four months on his journey from Babylon to Jerusalem ( Ezra 7:9).

3 They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

BAR�ES, "The attempt to rebuild the wall in the time of the Pseudo-Smerdis Ezr_4:12-24 had been stopped. It still remained in ruins. The Assyrian sculptures show that it was the usual practice to burn the gates.

CLARKE, "The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down - This must refer to the walls, which had been rebuilt after the people returned from their captivity: for it could not refer to the walls which were broken down and levelled with the dust by Nebuchadnezzar; for to hear of this could be no news to Nehemiah.

GILL, "And they said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province,.... In Judea, now reduced to a province of the Persian empire:

are in great affliction and reproach; harassed and distressed, calumniated and vilified, by their enemies the Samaritans:

the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burnt with fire; that is, its wall and gates were in the same condition in which Nebuchadnezzar had left them, for since his times as yet they had never been set up; for this is not to be understood of what was lately done by their adversaries, which is not at all probable.

HE�RY, " The melancholy account which is here given him of the present state of the Jews and Jerusalem, Neh_1:3. Hanani, the person he enquired of, has this character given of him (Neh_7:2), that he feared God above many, and therefore would not only speak truly, but, when he spoke of the desolations of Jerusalem, would speak tenderly. It is probable that his errand to court at this time was to solicit some favour, some relief or other, that they stood in need of. Now the account he gives is, 1. That the holy seed was miserably trampled on and abused, in great affliction and reproach, insulted upon all occasions by their neighbours, and filled with the scorning of those that were at ease. 2. That the holy city was exposed and in ruins. The wall of Jerusalem was still broken down, and the gates were, as the Chaldeans left them, in ruins. This made the condition of the inhabitants both very despicable under the abiding marks of poverty and slavery, and very dangerous, for their enemies might when they pleased make an easy prey of them. The temple was built, the government settled, and a work of reformation brought to some head, but here was one good work yet undone; this was still wanting. Every Jerusalem, on this side the heavenly one, will have some defect or other in it, for the making up of which it will required the help and service of its friends.

COFFMA�, "A SUMMARY OF THE BAD �EWS

"And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire."

"The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down" (�ehemiah 1:3). This should not be read as meaning that the breaking down of the wall had happened only recently. At this point in history, the wall had never been rebuilt since �ebuchadnezzar had destroyed it. There had indeed been an effort by the Jews to rebuild the wall, somewhat earlier in the reign of this same Artaxerxes I; but that had been totally frustrated by the hatred of Rehum and Shimshai the deputy rulers beyond the River; and in Ezra 4:17-22, we have the record of how the enemies of Israel had forcefully stopped all such efforts to rebuild the city. (See my discussion of this in Ezra 4.)

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:3 And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province [are] in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also [is] broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.

Ver. 3. Are in great affliction and reproach] The Church is heir of the cross, saith Luther, Ecclesia est haeres crucis, and it was ever the portion of God’s people to be reproached, as David was by Doeg with devouring words, Psalms 52:1. Their breath as fire shall devour you, Isaiah 33:11.

The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down] So that thieves and murderers came in, in the night, saith Comestor here, and slew many of them.

And the gates thereof are burnt with fire] They were burnt by the Chaldeans, and never yet repaired. And to keep a continual great watch was too great a charge and trouble.

BE�SO�, "�ehemiah 1:3. They said, The remnant that are left in the province —In Judea, which was now made a province under the Persian kings; are in great affliction and reproach — Despised and distressed by the neighbouring nations. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, &c. — The walls and gates continue as the Chaldeans left them after their conquest of the city, the Jews not being in a condition to rebuild them, nor having commission from the kings of Persia to do so, but only to build the temple, and their own private houses. This made their condition both very despicable, under the abiding marks of poverty and slavery, and very dangerous, for their enemies might, when they pleased, make an easy prey of them.

WHEDO�, "3. There in the province — The province of Judea. Comp. Ezra 5:8.

In great affliction and reproach — From the time of the arrival there of Zerubbabel and the first body of exiles until this date, the returned Jews had been vexed and troubled by neighbouring enemies — the descendants of the nations whom the eastern kings had settled in the cities of Samaria.

And though by the favour of the Persian kings they had succeeded in rebuilding the temple, they were still in a comparatively weak and helpless state, and their now implacable enemies, the Samaritans, would naturally take every opportunity that offered to trouble and distress them.

The wall… broken down, and the gates… burned — This partly explains their affliction and reproach. The returned exiles had never been able to rebuild the walls and gates of their loved city; and because they still remained in the ruined condition to which the Chaldean army had reduced them more than a century before, (2 Kings 25:9-10,) it was a standing affliction and reproach to the Jews.

Some critics aver that this ruinous state of the wall and gates of Jerusalem must have been caused by some recent calamity — probably by those neighbouring heathen tribes whose daughters had been married to certain Jews, but had been lately put away by Ezra’s legislation, as described in Ezra 10. They urge that the destruction effected by �ebuchadnezzar’s army more than a hundred years before could have been no news to �ehemiah. But this, like the position of these same critics on the passage in Ezra 4:6-23, (where see notes,) lacks support in the Scripture history. If the walls of Jerusalem had ever been rebuilt since their destruction by �ebuchadnezzar, it is strange that no mention of it occurs in these histories. Their rebuilding by �ehemiah was considered of such importance that a considerable portion of this book is given to a description of it, and any previous work of the kind must have been of sufficient importance to demand, at least, a

passing notice. But no such notice is found. The complaint of the Jews’ enemies in Ezra 4:12-16, that the returned exiles were building up the walls of the city, was, as we have shown in the notes there, a crafty misrepresentation, a perversion of the truth, for they were rebuilding the temple, not the city. A work of such importance as the rebuilding of the walls and gates of Jerusalem needs stronger evidence than that letter of the enemies of Judah, so manifestly given to misrepresentation, as the whole context shows.

It may not have been positively news to �ehemiah to be told that the walls and gates of Jerusalem were broken down and destroyed, but this fact was mentioned as showing the great cause or occasion of the affliction and reproach of the Jews at Jerusalem, and seems to have first suggested to �ehemiah the importance of having those walls and gates rebuilt. A work of such magnitude as the rebuilding of that ancient city, and especially of its defences, could not have been undertaken without express permission from the king, and no such permit had ever yet been granted since its destruction by the king of Babylon. The proclamations of Cyrus and Darius authorized only the rebuilding of the temple, and that any thing more than this had yet been attempted by the Jews is without proof.

COKE, "�ehemiah 1:3. The wall—also is broken down, &c.— The commissions which had hitherto been granted to the Jews were supposed to extend no further than to the rebuilding of the temple, and their own private houses; and therefore the walls and gates of the city lay in the same ruinous condition in which the Chaldeans left them after that devastation.

REFLECTIO�S.—�ehemiah, though nobly advanced at court, and honoured with a mansion in the palace of Shushan, still bore in his heart the welfare of Zion, and still preferred Jerusalem's prosperity before his chief joy. �ote; God has sometimes his friends even in the palace; and, though a court is usually a soil too unfavourable to religious concerns, he had monuments of grace even in �ero's houshold.

1. �ehemiah, on the visit of some of his brethren to Babylon, probably to solicit some favour in behalf of the Jews, earnestly inquires after Jerusalem, and the returned captives who dwelt in it; but receives an afflicting narrative of their wretched situation: the city lying in its desolations, and the people under distress, insulted, oppressed, and reproached by their more powerful neighbours. �ote; (1.) We must not, in our advancement, forget ourselves, and grow strange to our brethren because they may be poor or afflicted. (2.) The persecution of God's people, which discourages the unfaithful, awakens the greater zeal and concern of such as are true-hearted.

2. The melancholy account affected the good �ehemiah: the tears ran down his cheeks; and, in affliction, four days he fasted and prayed before the God of heaven, that he would remember their misery, and return to them in mercy. �ote; (1.) In seasons of public or private calamities, fasting and weeping should accompany our prayers. (2.) It is a relief to the oppression of our own spirit, when with tears we can pour our complaints into the bosom of a compassionate God. (3.) While we have a

God in heaven to go to, our deeper distresses are not desperate.

ELLICOTT, "(3) And they said.—�ehemiah’s question and his friends answer refer first to the people and then to the city. As to the former the terms used have a deep pathos. Those who had returned to their country—now only the province—are, in the question, the Jews that had escaped; in the answer they are the Remnant that are left: both being from the captivity.

In great affliction and reproach.—In distress because of the contempt of the people around. All these expressions are familiar in the prophets; but they are united here in a peculiar and affecting combination. As to the city, the report is that the walls were still “broken down”: lying prostrate, with partial exceptions, as �ebuchadnezzar left them a hundred and forty-two years before (2 Kings 25:10), and, moreover, what had not been recorded, “the gates thereof burned with fire.” Though the Temple had been rebuilt, there is no valid reason for supposing that. the walls of the city had been in part restored and again demolished.

PETT, "�ehemiah 1:3

‘And they said to me, “The remnant who are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.”We have already seen in Ezra that the Jews who had returned from Babylon saw themselves as the true Israel, ‘the remnant’ of Israel who ‘escaped’ (Ezra 3:8; Ezra 9:8). It is therefore quite clear that it is the returnees who had established themselves in Judah who were seen as ‘the remnant who are left of the captivity (exile)’. Does this then mean that �ehemiah did not see himself as a part of the remnant of the captivity? The answer, of course, is no. His heart and his spirit were with them. What he did not have was permission to go. Like Daniel before him, he was not in a job that he could leave at will. He was a slave, albeit a very exalted one, of the king of Persia.

‘Are in great affliction and reproach.’ The word used for ‘affliction’ is regularly translated ‘evil’. Great evil had come upon them. This suggests that they were having a very difficult time indeed, and reminds us how little we know about the problems that they faced, problems of drought, recurring violence, constant antagonism of their neighbours, and so on. The word for reproach indicates the constant criticism and hatred that was directed against them because they refused to dilute Yahwism by allowing syncretists to worship with them. All around them sought to bring them into shame, the syncretistic Jews who had remained in the land and were largely only semi-Yahwists; the syncretistic half-Yahwists in Samaria; and the out and out idolaters. The returnees, and those who sided with them, were being treated as outcasts and pariahs because of their faithfulness to truth. The situation had no doubt been made worse by the putting away of wealthy idolatrous wives, who were put away because of their idolatry which was affecting the remnant. They would have had great influence among their own people (Ezra 9-10).

Furthermore this appalling situation was revealed physically in the state of Jerusalem. As a consequence of their adversaries the walls that they had been attempting to rebuild had been broken down, and its gates burned with fire (Ezra 4:23). All their attempts to make themselves secure had been stymied. The reaction of �ehemiah here, and the fact that it is mentioned at all, demonstrates that this must have occurred recently. He would have know perfectly well what had happened to the walls of Jerusalem as a result of the Babylonian invasion, and it was history long gone (over one hundred and forty years previously). �ews of it would hardly, therefore, have been brought to him, nor would it have stirred him. It suggests that he had seemingly previously heard, and rejoiced over the fact, that the walls were being rebuilt so that the fact that they had now been again destroyed hit him hard.

LA�GE, "�ehemiah 1:3. �ehemiah’s informers tell him that the remnant (han-nisharim, “the left-over ones”) in the province are in great affliction (the general word for adversity) and reproach (the word explaining the cause of the adversity). They were the objects of scorn and contemptuous treatment from the neighboring peoples. The wall of Jerusalem they also represent as broken down and its gates burned. �ebuchadnezzar had broken down the walls a hundred and forty-two years before ( 2 Kings 25:10) and the attempt to rebuild them had been stopped by the Pseudo-Smerdis (the Artaxerxes of Ezra 4:7) seventy-six years before this embassy to �ehemiah. After that, in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, the temple had been finished, but the walls seem not to have been touched. The burnt gates were also, doubtless, the old wreck from �ebuchadnezzar’s time. There is no reason for supposing that the walls had been rebuilt, and again destroyed. Hanani and the men of Judah add to their statement of the affliction and reproach of the province that the walls still remain in their old ruined condition.

PULPIT, The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down. It has been supposed, either that the demolition of the wall here referred to was quite recent, having occurred during the space of twelve years which intervenes between the Books of Ezra and �ehemiah, or else that it belonged to a time of depression which followed shortly after the completion of the temple by Zerubbabel; but there is really no reason to believe that the demolition effected under the orders of �ebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:10) had ever hitherto been repaired, or the restoration of the wall even attempted. The Samaritan accusation in Ezra 4:12 falls short of a statement that the wall was restored, and, if it asserted the fact, would be insufficient authority for it. The supposition of Ewald, that "as soon as the city was rebuilt, the attempt would be made to fortify it", ignores the jealousy of the Persians and their power to step in and prevent a subject town from fortifying itself.

4 When I heard these things, I sat down and wept.

For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

BAR�ES, "The God of heaven - This title of the Almighty, which is Persian rather than Jewish (see 2Ch_36:23; Ezr_1:2 note; Ezr_6:10; Ezr_7:12, Ezr_7:21), is a favorite one with Nehemiah, who had been born and brought up in Persia.

CLARKE, "Andmourned certain days - From the month Chisleu to the month Nisan; about four months from the time he received the above information, till the time that Artaxerxes noticed his grief, Neh_2:1. All this time he probably spent in supplication to God; waiting for a favorable opening in the Divine providence. Every good work is not to be undertaken hastily; prayer and watchfulness are necessary to its completion. Many good works have been ruined by making haste.

GILL, "And it came to pass, when I heard these words,.... This sad and melancholy account of things:

that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days; sat down upon the ground in dust and ashes, after the manner of mourners, and wept bitterly, and mourned in a most sorrowful manner, see Job_2:8,

and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven; that made it, and dwells in it.

HE�RY, " The great affliction this gave to Nehemiah and the deep concern it put him into, Neh_1:4. 1. He wept and mourned. It was not only just when he heard the news that he fell into a passion of weeping, but his sorrow continued certain days. Note, The desolations and distresses of the church ought to be the matter of our grief, how much soever we live at ease. 2. He fasted and prayed; not in public (he had no opportunity of doing that), but before the God of heaven, who sees in secret, and will reward openly. By his fasting and praying, (1.) He consecrated his sorrows, and directed his tears aright, sorrowed after a godly sort, with an eye to God, because his name was reproached in the contempt cast on his people, whose cause therefore he thus commits to him. (2.) He eased his sorrows, and unburdened his spirit, by pouring out his complaint before God and leaving it with him. (3.) He took the right method of fetching in relief for his people and direction for himself in what way to serve them. Let those who are forming any good designs for the service of the public take God along with them for the first conception of them, and utter all their projects before him; this is the way to prosper in them.

JAMISO�, "Neh_1:4-11. His prayer.

when I heard these words, that I sat down ... and mourned ... and fasted, and prayed — The recital deeply affected the patriotic feelings of this good man, and no

comfort could he find but in earnest and protracted prayer, that God would favor the purpose, which he seems to have secretly formed, of asking the royal permission to go to Jerusalem.

K&D, "Neh_1:4This description of the state of the returned captives plunged Nehemiah into such

deep affliction, that he passed some days in mourning, fasting, and prayer. Opinions are divided with respect to the historical relation of the facts mentioned Neh_1:3. Some older expositors thought that Hanani could not have spoken of the destruction of the walls and gates of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, because this was already sufficiently known to Nehemiah, but of some recent demolition on the part of Samaritans and other hostile neighbours of the Jews; in opposition to which, Rambach simply replies that we are told nothing of a restoration of the wall of Jerusalem by Zerubbabel and Ezra. More recently Ewald (Geschichte, iv. p. 137f.) has endeavoured to show, from certain psalms which he transposes to post-Babylonian times, the probability of a destruction of the rebuilt wall, but gives a decided negative to the question, whether this took place during the thirteen years between the arrivals of Ezra and Nehemiah. “For,” says he, “there is not in the whole of Nehemiah's record the most distant hint that the walls had been destroyed only a short time since; but, on the contrary, this destruction was already so remote an event, that its occasion and authors were no longer spoken of.” Vaihinger (Theol. Stud. und Krit., 1857, p. 88, comp. 1854, p. 124f.) and Bertheau are of opinion that it indisputably follows from Neh_1:3-4, as appearances show, that the walls of Jerusalem were actually rebuilt and the gates set up before the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, and that the destruction of this laborious work, which occasioned the sending of an embassy to the Persian court, was of quite recent occurrence, since otherwise Nehemiah would not have been so painfully affected by it. But even the very opposite opinion held concerning the impression made upon the reader by these verses, shows that appearances are deceitful, and the view that the destruction of the walls and gates was of quite recent occurrence is not implied by the words themselves, but only inserted in them by expositors. There is no kind of historical evidence that the walls of Jerusalem which had been destroyed by the Chaldeans were once more rebuilt before Nehemiah's arrival.

The documents given by Ezr_4:8-22, which are in this instance appealed to, so far from proving the fact, rather bear testimony against it. The counsellor Rehum and the scribe Shimshai, in their letter to Artaxerxes, accuse indeed the Jews of building a rebellious and bad city, of restoring its walls and digging its foundations (Ezr_4:12); but they only give the king to understand that if this city be built and its walls restored, the king will no longer have a portion on this side the river (Ezr_4:16), and hasten to Jerusalem, as soon as they receive the king's decision, to hinder the Jews by force and power (Ezr_4:23). Now, even if this accusation were quite well founded, nothing further can be inferred from it than that the Jews had begun to restore the walls, but were hindered in the midst of their undertaking. Nothing is said in these documents either of a rebuilding, i.e., a complete restoration, of the walls and setting up of the gates, or of breaking down the walls and burning the gates. It cannot be said that to build a wall means the same as pulling down a wall already built. Nor is anything said in Neh_1:3and Neh_1:4 of a recent demolition. The assertion, too, that the destruction of this laborious work was the occasion of the mission of Hanani and certain men of Judah to the Persian court (Vaihinger), is entirely without scriptural support. In Neh_1:2 and Neh_1:3 it is merely said that Hanani and his companions came from Judah to

Nehemiah, and that Nehemiah questioned them concerning the condition of the Jews in the province of Judah, and concerning Jerusalem, and that they answered: The Jews there are in great affliction and reproach, for the wall of Jerusalem is broken down

is a participle expressing the state, not the praeter. or perfect, which would be מפרצת)

found here if a destruction recently effected were spoken of). Nehemiah, too, in Neh_2:3and Neh_2:17, only says: The city of my fathers' sepulchres (Jerusalem) lieth desolate

not: has been desolated. Nor can a visit on the part of Jews from ,(is an adjective חרבה)

Judah to their compatriot and relative, the king's cup-bearer, be called a mission to the Persian court. - With respect also to the deep affliction of Nehemiah, upon which Bertheau lays so much stress, it by no means proves that he had received a terrible account of some fresh calamity which had but just befallen the community at Jerusalem, and whose whole extent was as yet unknown to him. Nehemiah had not as yet been to Jerusalem, and could not from his own experience know the state of affairs in Judah and Jerusalem; hence he questioned the newly arrived visitors, not concerning the latest occurrences, but as to the general condition of the returned captives. The fact of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldees could not, of course, be unknown to him; but neither could he be ignorant that now ninety years since a great number of captives had returned to their homes with Zerubbabel and settled in Judah and Jerusalem, and that seventy years since the temple at Jerusalem had been rebuilt. Judging from these facts, he might not have imagined that the state of affairs in Judah and Jerusalem was so bad as it really was. When, then, he now learnt that those who had returned to Judah were in great affliction, that the walls of the town were still lying in ruins and its gates burned, and that it was therefore exposed defenceless to all the insults of hostile neighbours, even this information might well grieve him. It is also probable that it was through Hanani and his companions that he first learnt of the inimical epistle of the royal officials Rehum and Shimshai to Artaxerxes, and of the answer sent thereto by that monarch and thus became for the first time aware of the magnitude of his fellow-countrymen's difficulties. Such intelligence might well be such a shock to him as to cause the amount of distress described Neh_1:4. For even if he indulged the hope that the king might repeal the decree by which the rebuilding of the wall had been prohibited till further orders, he could not but perceive how difficult it would be effectually to remedy the grievous state in which his countrymen who had returned to the land of their fathers found themselves, while the disposition of their neighbours towards them was thus hostile. This state was indeed sufficiently distressing to cause deep pain to one who had a heart alive to the welfare of his nation, and there is no need for inventing new “calamities,” of which history knows nothing, to account for the sorrow of Nehemiah. Finally, the circumstance that the destruction of the walls and burning of the gates are alone mentioned as proofs of the affliction and reproach which the returned exiles were suffering, arises simply from an intention to hint at the remedy about to be described in the narrative which follows, by bringing this special kind of reproach prominently forward.

COFFMA�, "�EHEMIAH'S RESPO�SE TO THE BAD �EWS

"And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days; and I fasted and prayed before the God of Heaven. And I said:"

As cupbearer of the king, �ehemiah was a prominent and trusted member of the king's court, living in honor, security and luxury; "But he could not forget that he was an Israelite, and this was similar to the emotions that governed the life of Moses."[16]

"I prayed before the God of heaven" (�ehemiah 1:4). "This title of the Almighty is Persian rather than Jewish; but it was a favorite of �ehemiah who had been brought up in Persia."[17] We keep encountering remarks of this kind in the writings of several commentators; but there is no way that they can be considered true. Jonah mentioned "The God of heaven" in the eighth century B.C. (�ehemiah 1:9); and we find it also in the works of Moses about one millennium before �ehemiah's time (Genesis 24:3,7).

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:4 And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned [certain] days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven,

Ver. 4. And it came to pass when I heard] It was not without a special providence that these good men thus met, and by mutual conference kindled one another; and that thereby God provided a remedy. Things fall not out by haphazard, but by God’s most wise dispose and appointment.

That I sat down and wept] He was even pressed down with the greatness of his grief, whereto be gave vent by his eyes, Zephaniah 3:17-18, Expletur lachrymis, egeriturque dolor (Ovid) He was filled with tears and grief was shown. God promises much mercy to such to whom the reproach of the solemn assemblies was a burden. �ehemiah cannot stand under it, but sits down and weeps.

And mourned certain days] viz. For three months’ time; for so long he was preparing himself to petition the king, �ehemiah 1:1; �ehemiah 2:1.

And fasted, and prayed] This was a sure course, and never miscarried, as hath been noted, Ezra 9:1-15.

Before the God of heaven] With face turned toward his holy temple, 1 Kings 8:44; 1 Kings 8:48, with heart lifted up to the highest heavens, those hills whence should come his help.

BE�SO�, "�ehemiah 1:4. When I heard these words I sat down — Probably upon the ground, as the manner was, in great sorrow, and perhaps in ashes; and wept and mourned certain days — Thus the desolations and distresses of the church of Christ ought to be the matter of our grief, how much soever we live at ease. And fasted and prayed — �ot in public, which he had no opportunity of doing, but before the God

of heaven — Who sees in secret, and will reward openly.

CO�STABLE, "Verses 4-112. The response of �ehemiah 1:4-11

�ehemiah"s reaction to this bad news was admirable. He made it a subject of serious prolonged prayer ( �ehemiah 1:4; �ehemiah 1:11; �ehemiah 2:1). Daniel had been another high-ranking Jewish official in the Persian government, and he too was a man of prayer.

"Of the406 verses in the book, the prayers fill46 verses (11%), and the history accounts for146 (36%). The various lists ... add up to214verses or53% of the total." [�ote: Robert D. Bell, "The Theology of �ehemiah ," Biblical Viewpoint20:2 (�ovember1986):56.]

�ehemiah began his prayer with praise for God"s greatness and His loyal love for His people ( �ehemiah 1:5). As Ezra had done, he acknowledged that the Jews had been guilty of sinning against God (cf. Ezra 9:6-7). They had disobeyed the Mosaic Law ( �ehemiah 1:7). �ehemiah reminded God of His promise to restore His people to their land if they repented ( �ehemiah 1:8-9; cf. Deuteronomy 30:1-5). He also noted that these were the people Yahweh had redeemed from Egyptian slavery for a special purpose ( �ehemiah 1:10; cf. Deuteronomy 9:29). He concluded with a petition that his planned appeal to the king would be successful ( �ehemiah 1:11 a).

"With the expression this man at the end of the prayer �ehemiah shows the big difference between his reverence for his God and his conception of his master, the Persian king. In the eyes of the world Artaxerxes was an important person, a man with influence, who could decide on life or death. In the eyes of �ehemiah , with his religious approach, Artaxerxes was just a man like any other man. The Lord of history makes the decisions, not Artaxerxes." [�ote: F. Charles Fensham, The Books of Ezra and �ehemiah , p157.]

"Although he is a layperson, he stands with the great prophets in interceding for his people and in calling them to be faithful to the Sinai covenant." [�ote: Fredrick C. Holmgren, Israel Alive Again, p90.]

If �ehemiah wrote this book, he was also a prophet (cf. Daniel). Extrabiblical references that mention the office of cupbearer in the Persian court have revealed that this was a position second only in authority to the king ( �ehemiah 1:11 b). [�ote: Fensham, p157.] �ehemiah was not only the chief treasurer and keeper of the king"s signet ring, but he also tasted the king"s food to make sure no one had poisoned it ( Tobit 1:22). [�ote: Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 1:3:9.]

"The cupbearer . . . in later Achaemenid times was to exercise even more influence than the commander-in-chief." [�ote: A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire, p217.]

"Achaememid" refers to the dynasty of Persian rulers at this time.

"From varied sources it may be assumed that �ehemiah as a royal cupbearer would probably have had the following traits: 1. He would have been well trained in court etiquette (cf. Daniel 1:4-5). 2. He was probably a handsome individual (cf. Daniel 1:4; Daniel 1:13; Daniel 1:15). 3. He would certainly know how to select the wines to set before the king.... 4. He would have to be a convivial companion to the king with a willingness to lend an ear at all times.... 5. He would be a man of great influence as one with the closest access to the king, and one who could well determine who could see the king6. Above all, �ehemiah had to be an individual who enjoyed the unreserved confidence of the king." [�ote: Edwin M. Yamauchi, "The Archaeological Background of �ehemiah ," Bibliotheca Sacra137:548 (October-December1980):296-97.]

Some commentators have concluded that �ehemiah as cupbearer must have been a eunuch. [�ote: E.g, Jacob M. Myers, Ezra -, �ehemiah , p96; and John Bright, A History of Israel, p364.] This opinion rests on the translation of the Greek word eunouchos ("eunuch") instead of oinochoos ("cupbearer") in one version of the Septuagint. However, this rendering appears to have been an error in translation, since the Hebrew word means cupbearer. [�ote: Yamauchi, p298.]

"Like many since his time, �ehemiah"s greatness came from asking great things of a great God and attempting great things in reliance on him." [�ote: Breneman, p174.]

ELLICOTT, "Verses 4-11(4-11) �ehemiah’s appeal to God. The prayer is a perfect example of the private and individual devotion with which the later Hebrew Scriptures abound. It begins with formal and appropriate invocation (�ehemiah 1:5-8), flows into earnest confession (�ehemiah 1:6-7), pleads the covenant promises (�ehemiah 1:8-10), and supplicates a present answer (�ehemiah 1:11). The extant Scriptures, freely used, are the foundation of all.

(4) Fasted.—Like Daniel, Esther, and Ezra, �ehemiah fasted: fasting appears in later Judaism a prominent part of individual devotion, as it is in the �ew Testament.

(6) Both I and my father’s house have sinned.—The supplication was for the nation; and in such cases of personal intercession the individual assumes the sin of all the past.

(8) The spirit of many threatenings and promises is summed up, as in the prayer of �ehemiah 9.

(11) This day . . . this man.—During his “certain days” of mourning �ehemiah had fixed upon his plan, suggested by his God. “This day” is “this occasion”: the appeal itself was deferred for some months. The king becomes “this man” in the presence of the “God of heaven.”

For I was the king’s cupbearer.—One of his cupbearers, therefore in high authority, having confidential access to him.

PARKER, "When �ehemiah heard the story, what happened?

"It came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept" ( �ehemiah 1:4).

Exactly what we might have expected from the temperament and the pith of that man. A man is not weak because he sits down to cry now and then. There are some tears that are dreadful—some tears that will harden into bars and bolts and be heard of again in sharp encounters. What are our tears? �ehemiah"s words were battles, and his tears may be said to have been the ammunition of war. Are we all words and tears? Is there no stroke behind? no activity, no force? What are we doing? Could we hear of sacred places being burned down without shedding a single tear for them? Could we hear of St. Paul"s cathedral being burned down without feeling that we had sustained an irreparable loss? and if anything happened to that grand old Abbey at Westminster we should feel as if we had lost a sacred place—a sanctuary, and as if it were every Englishman"s duty to help to put it up again. �o, he never could put it up again! There are some men who never could be replaced; some structures never can be substituted. Let us have pathos of nature, enthusiasm, passion, feeling! Let us care for something; that care for something may be our salvation some day. It is out of such smoking flax that God causes the fire of high consecration to burn.

PETT, "Verses 4-11�ehemiah’s Cry Goes Up To God (�ehemiah 1:4-11).

So �ehemiah now did what God’s true people always do when they face adversity. He prayed to YHWH. The prayer is very much an individualistic one, although parts of it can, as we would expect, be paralleled elsewhere, for he prayed with a full knowledge of his people’s liturgical past. He was not praying out of a vacuum, but with a good knowledge of Judah’s prayers of old.

His prayer can be summarised as follows:

A An elaborate approach to God (�ehemiah 1:5). Compare Daniel 9:4; Deuteronomy 7:9; Deuteronomy 7:21; Deuteronomy 10:17.B A plea to be heard (�ehemiah 1:6 a). Compare 1 Kings 8:28-29; 2 Chronicles 6:40; 2 Chronicles 7:15; Psalms 130:2; Isaiah 37:17.C A deep confession of the sin of his people, including his father’s house (�ehemiah 1:6-7). Compare Ezra 9:6; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Leviticus 16:21; Leviticus 5:5.D An appeal to God on the basis of His covenant promises (�ehemiah 1:8-9). Compare Leviticus 26:42; Psalms 105:8; Psalms 106:45;C A description of the people for whom he is praying (�ehemiah 1:10).B A request that God be responsive to both his and their prayers (�ehemiah 1:11 a).

A An appeal that God will help him as he takes the dangerous path of approaching the king on their behalf (�ehemiah 1:11 b).�ote how in ‘A’ he approaches God, and in the parallel he approaches the king. In ‘B’ he makes a plea to be heard, and in the parallel he asks God to be responsive to his prayers. In ‘C’ he confesses the sin of his people, and in the parallel he describes the people for whom he is praying. Centrally in ‘D’ he makes his appeal on the basis of the covenant.

�ehemiah 1:4

‘And it came about, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days; and I fasted and prayed before the God of heaven,’He did not rush into his prayer. He pondered deeply over the news that he had received, something which caused him to sit down and weep as he thought of the sufferings of his people. He mourned over the news for a good number of days, fasting and praying ‘before the God of Heaven’. This last was the name by which YHWH was known in Persia and Babylon (compare Daniel 2:18-19; Daniel 2:37; Daniel 2:44; Ezra 5:12; Ezra 6:9-10; Ezra 7:12; Ezra 7:23) and to foreigners (Jonah 1:9). The purpose of fasting was in order to express grief, and in order to prevent anything interfering with his praying.

LA�GE, "�ehemiah 1:4. �ehemiah’s prayer. The tidings brought by Hanani and the others deeply moved �ehemiah, and led him to a special season of humiliation and prayer. His grief was doubtless increased at the thought that all this evil existed in spite of Ezra’s work, for Ezra had gone to Jerusalem thirteen years before. He sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed.—That Isaiah, he withdrew from his court duties, and spent a period of retirement (comp. Psalm 137:1 for the phrase “sat down and wept”) in most sincere sorrow, which compelled his fasting and prayer, as its godly manifestations. The phrase God of heaven (Elohe hash-shamayim) is supposed by some to be only found with the writers of the Babylonish or post-Babylonish period, Daniel,, Ezra,, �ehemiah, and the author of the 136 th Psalm, but we find it in Genesis 24:3; Genesis 24:7, and in Jonah 1:9. The style is repeated in Revelation 11:13; Revelation 16:11 (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ οὐρανοῦ). It was a natural epithet to distinguish Jehovah from the gods of earthy formed of earthly substances. The phrase cannot properly be called Persian, as the reference in Jonah proves. Moreover, it does not occur in the long Behistun inscription. If it was used by the later Persians, it is as likely to have been taken from the Jews as vice versâ.

PULPIT, "When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. The revelation of the actual condition of Jerusalem came upon �ehemiah with a shock. He had perhaps not thought much upon the subject before; he had had no means of exact information; he had supposed the city flourishing under the superintendence of Ezra, whose piety and patriotism were no doubt known to him. It was a bitter grief to him to find that his people were still "a reproach to their neighbours," laughed to scorn by those whose walls had never been destroyed, or who had been allowed to rebuild them. And he may have felt that his city, under the circumstances of the time, was in real danger. As Dean Stanley observes—"In those days rather one may

say m those countries of disorder, a city without locked gates and lofty walls was no city at all". A few years previously Egypt had been in revolt; she might revolt again, and carry her arms into Syria. Arab tribes from the desert might extend their raids into Judaea, and be tempted by the known value of the temple treasures to swoop upon the unwalled town. Such thoughts occurring to an excitable Oriental, produced not grief and anxiety merely, but a flood of tears (comp. Ezra 10:1). And fasted. Fasting had become a frequent practice among the Jews during the captivity. Solemn fasts had been introduced on the anniversaries of the taking of Jerusalem, the burning of the temple, and the murder of Gedaliah (Zechariah 8:19). Fasting had also taken a prominent place in the devotions of individuals. Daniel fasted (Daniel 9:3; Daniel 10:3); Esther fasted (Esther 4:16); Ezra fasted (Ezra 10:6); and now �ehemiah fasted. On the grounds of natural piety out of which the practice arises, see the comment on Ezra 10:6. The God of heaven. See the comment on Ezra 1:2.

EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE COMME�TARY, "�EHEMIAH’S PRAYER

�ehemiah 1:4-11

�EHEMIAH records the twofold effect of the melancholy news which his brother and the other travellers from Jerusalem brought him. Its first consequence was grief; its second prayer. The grief was expressed in the dramatic style of the Oriental by weeping, lamentations, fasting, and other significant acts and attitudes which the patriot kept up for some days. Demonstrative as all this appears to us. it was calm and restrained in comparison with Ezra’s frantic outburst. Still it was the sign and fruit of heart felt distress, for �ehemiah was really and deeply moved. Had the incident ended here, we should have seen a picture of patriotic sentiment, such as might be looked for in any loyal Jew, although the position of �ehemiah at court would have proved him loyal under exceptional circumstances. But the prayer which is the outcome of the soul-stirring thoughts and feelings of devout patriotism lifts the scene into a much higher interest. This prayer is singularly penetrating, revealing a keen insight into the secret of the calamities of Israel, and an exact perception of the relation of God to those calamities. It shows a knowledge of what we may call the theology of history, of the Divine laws and principles which are above and behind the laws and principles indicated by the expression "the philosophy of history." In form it is a combination of three elements, - the language of devotion cultivated by Persian sages, expressions culled from the venerated Hebrew law-book, Deuteronomy, and new phrases called out by the new needs of the immediate occasion. �ehemiah shows how natural it is for a person to fall into an accepted dialect of worship, even in an original prayer the end of which is novel and special.

He opens his prayer with an expression that seems to be more Persian than Jewish. He does not make his appeal to Jehovah as the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," hut after the sacred name he adds the descriptive title "God of heaven." This is quite a favourite phrase of �ehemiah’s. Thus in describing his interview with

Artaxerxes he says, "So I prayed to the God of heaven" [�ehemiah 2:4] and at Jerusalem he answers the mockery of his opponents by exclaiming, "The God of heaven, He will prosper us." [�ehemiah 2:20] �ow the same expression is found repeatedly in the chronicler’s version of royal edicts-in the edict of Cyrus, [Ezra 1:2] in the edict of Darius, [Ezra 6:10] in the edict of Artaxerxes. [Ezra 7:12; Ezra 7:21; Ezra 7:23] If it is indeed of Persian origin, the use of it by �ehemiah is most significant. In this case, while it indicates the speaker’s unconscious adoption of the language of his neighbours and shows him to be a Jew of Oriental culture, it also illustrates a far-reaching process of Providence. Here is an exalted name for God, the origin of which is apparently Gentile, accepted and used by a devout Jew, and through his employment of it passing over into the Scriptures, so that the religion of Israel is enriched by a phrase from abroad. It would be but a poor championship of the truth of the Hebrew revelation that would lead us to close our eyes to whatever of good is to be found outside its borders. Certainly we honour God by gladly perceiving that He has not left Himself entirely without witness in the dim-lit temple of Pagan thought. It is a ground for rejoicing that, while the science of Comparative Religion has not touched the unique preeminence of the Hebrew and Christian Faith, that science has been able to recover scattered pearls of truth that lay strewn over the waste of the world’s wide thinking. If in a few rare cases some such gems had been found earlier and even set in the crown of Israel, we can only be thankful that the One Spirit who is the source of all revelation has thus evinced the breadth of His activity. �or should it disturb our faith if it could be proved that more important elements of our religion did not originate among the Jews, but came from Babylonian, Persian, or Greek sources, for why should not God speak through a Gentile if He chooses so to do? This is not a point of dogma. It is simply a question of fact to be determined by historical inquiry.

We cannot say for certain, however, that �ehemiah’s phrase was coined in a Persian mint. Its novelty, its absence from earlier Hebrew literature, and its repeated appearance in the edicts of Persian kings favour the notion. But we know that before reaching us these edicts have been more or less translated into Hebrew forms of thought, so that the phrase may possibly be Jewish, after all. Still, even in that ease it seems clear that it must have been first used in the East and under the Persian rule. The widening of his horizon and the elevation of his idea of Providence which resulted from the experience of the exile helped to enlarge and exalt the Jew’s whole conception of God. Jehovah could no longer be thought of as a tribal divinity. The greater prophets had escaped from any such primitive notion much earlier, but not the bulk of the nation. �ow the exiles saw that the domain of their God could not be limited to. the hills and valleys of Palestine. They perceived how His arm reached from the river to the ends of the earth, how His might was everywhere supreme, directing the history of empires, overthrowing great monarchies, establishing new world-powers.

A more subtle movement of thought has been detected in the appearance of this suggestive phrase, "God of heaven." The idea of the transcendence of God is seen to be growing in the mind of the Jew. God appears to be receding into remote celestial regions-His greatness including distance. As yet this is only vaguely felt, but here we

have the beginning of a characteristic of Judaism which becomes more and more marked in course of time, until it seems as though God were cut off from all direct connection with men on earth, and only administering the world through a whole army of intermediaries, the angels.

After this phrase with the Persian flavour, �ehemiah adds expressions borrowed from the Hebrew Book of Deuteronomy, a book with ideas and words from which his prayer is saturated throughout. God is described on the one hand as "great and terrible," and on the other hand as keeping covenant and mercy for them that love Him and observe His commandments. [�ehemiah 1:5; See Deuteronomy 7:9] The Deuteronomist adds "to a thousand generations"-a clause not needed by �ehemiah, who is now only concerned with one special occasion. The first part of the description is in harmony with the new and exalted title of God, and therefore it fits in well here. It is also suitable for the circumstances of the prayer, because in times of calamity we are impressed with the power and terror of Providence. There is another side to these attributes, however. The mention of them suggests that the sufferers have not fallen into the hand of man. Hanani and his fellow-Jews made no allusion to a Divine action; they could not see beyond the jealousy of neighbouring people in the whole course of events. But �ehemiah at once recognised God’s hand. This perception would calm him as he watched the solemn movement of the drama carried up into heavenly regions. Then, aided by the cheering thought which came to him from the book of Divine revelation on which his prayer was moulded, �ehemiah turns to the covenant-keeping mercy of God. The covenant which he appeals to here must be that of the Book of Deuteronomy; his subsequent reference to the contents of that book make this quite clear.

It is important to see that �ehemiah recognises the relation of God’s mercy to His covenant. He perceives that the two go together, that the covenant does not dispense with the need of mercy any more than it forecloses the action of mercy. When the covenant people fall into sin, they cannot claim forgiveness as a right, nor can they ever demand deliverance from trouble on the ground of their pact with God. God does not, bargain with His children. A Divine covenant is not a business arrangement, the terms of. which can be interpreted like those of a deed of partnership, and put into force by the determinate will of either party. The covenant is, from the first, a gracious Divine promise and dispensation, conditioned by certain requirements to be observed on man’s side. Its very existence is a fruit of God’s mercy, not an outcome of man’s haggling, and its operation is just through the continuance of that mercy. It is true a promise, a sort of pledge, goes with the covenant, but that is a promise of mercy, a pledge of grace. It does not dispense with the mercy of God by converting what would otherwise be an act of pure grace on his part into a right which we possess and act upon of our own sole will. What it does is to afford a channel for the mercy of God, and to assure us of His mercy, which, however, remains mercy throughout.

From another point of view the covenant and the mercy go together. The mercy follows the covenant. The expression "the unconvenanted mercies of God" has been used in bitter irony, as though any hope that depended on such mercies was poor

indeed, a bare refuge of despair. But so to treat the unknown goodness of God is to discredit that "ceaseless, unexhausted love" which has given us the latest and highest and best name of God. We do not know how far the vast ocean of the loving kindness of God extends. On the other hand, certain definite assurances of mercy are given along the lines of a covenant. Therefore it is clearly wise and right for people who possess the covenant to follow those lines. Other people who are outside the covenant may meet with wonderful surprises in the infinite Fatherhood of God; but those of His children who are in the home must expect to be treated according to the established order of the house. �o doubt they too will have their grand surprises of Divine grace, for God does not tie Himself to forms and rules at home while He exercises liberty abroad. To do so would be to make the home a prison. But still His revelation of methods of grace is a clear indication that it is our duty to observe those methods, and that we have no ground of complaint if we do not receive the grace we seek when we wilfully neglect them. Here then we see the necessity of studying the revelation of the will and mind of God. That prayer has most ground of hope in it which keeps nearest to the thought and spirit of Scripture.

The terms of the covenant quoted by �ehemiah require obedience on the part of those who would receive mercy under it, and this obedience is needed in those who are seeking restoration and forgiveness as well as in those who have not fallen from the covenant throughout. The reference to "mercy" makes that clear. The penitent submits, and in the surrender of his will he is made the recipient of the Divine mercy. But behind the obedience is the spirit of love that prompts it. The mercy is for them that love God and observe His commandments. Love is the fulfilling of the law from the first. It is expected in the Old Testament as well as in the �ew; it is prescribed by the Deuteronomist as decidedly as by St. John, for it is the only ground of real obedience. The slavish terror of the lash which squeezes out a reluctant utterance of submission will not open the door for the mercy of God. The divine covenant secures mercy only for those who return to their allegiance in a spirit of love.

Having thus set forth the grounds of his prayer in his address to God and his plea of the covenant, �ehemiah proceeds to invoke the Divine attention to his petition. There is an echo of the courtier, perhaps, in his request that God’s ear should be attentive and His eyes open: [�ehemiah 1:6] but his whole conduct forbids the idea of servile obsequiousness. His prayer, he here says, is offered "day and night," so his report of it may be regarded as a sort of final summing up of a long, persevering succession of prayers. The unwearying persistence of the man reveals two favourable features in his character-his earnestness of purpose and his unflagging faith. Our Lord denounces "vain repetitions" [Matthew 6:7] -i, e., repetitions the very value of which is thought to reside in their number, as though prayer could be estimated arithmetically. But the prayer that is repeated simply because the worshipper is too persistent to be satisfied till it is answered does not come into the category of "vain repetitions": it is anything but empty.

Immediately after his invocation of God’s gracious attention �ehemiah plunges into a confession of sin. Ezra’s great prayer was wholly occupied with confession, [Ezra

9:6-15] and this mournful exercise takes a large place in �ehemiah’s prayer. But the younger man has one special ground of confession. The startling news of the ruinous condition of the recently restored city of Jerusalem rouses a sort of national conscience in his breast. He knows that the captivity was brought about as a chastisement for the sins of the Jews. That great lesson-so recklessly ignored when it was insisted on by Jeremiah-had been burnt into the deepest convictions of the exiles. Therefore �ehemiah makes no complaint of the cruel behaviour of the enemies of Israel. He does not whine about the pitiable plight of the Jews. Their real enemies were their sins, and the explanation of their present distress was to be found in their own bad conduct. Thus �ehemiah goes to the root of the matter, and that without a moment’s hesitation.

Further, it is interesting to see how he identifies himself with his people in this confession. Living far from the seat of the evil, himself a God-fearing, upright man, he might have been tempted to treat the citizens of Jerusalem as Job’s comforters treated the patriarch of Uz, and denounce their sins from the secure heights of his own virtue. In declining to assume this pharisaic attitude, �ehemiah shows that he is not thinking of recent specific sins committed by the returned exiles. The whole history of Israel’s apostasy is before him; he feels that the later as truly as the earlier calamities flow from this one deep, foul fountain of iniquity. Thus he can join himself with his fathers and the whole nation in the utterance of confession. This is different from the confession of Ezra, who was thinking of one definite sin which he did not share, but which he confessed in a priestly sympathy. �ehemiah is less concerned with formal legal precepts. He is more profoundly moved by the wide and deep course of his people’s sin generally. Still it is a mark of self-knowledge and true humility, as well as of patriotism, that he honestly associates himself with his fellow-countrymen. He perceives that particular sins, such as those found in the recent misconduct of the Jews, are but symptoms of the underlying sinful character, and that while circumstances may save the individual from the temptation to exhibit every one of these symptoms, they are accidental, and they cannot be set to his credit. The common sin is in him still, therefore he may well join himself to the penitents, even though he has not participated in all their evil deeds. The solidarity of the race is, unhappily, never more apparent than in its sin. This sin is especially the "one touch of" fallen "nature" that "makes the whole world kin." It was to a trait of frailty that Shakespeare was alluding when he coined his famous phrase, as the context proves. The trail of the serpent is over every human life, and in this ugly mark we have a terrible sign of human brotherhood. Of all the elements of "Common Prayer," confession can be most perfectly shared by every member of a congregation, if only all the worshippers are in earnest and know their own hearts.

�ehemiah does not enter much into detail with this confession. It is sweeping and widely comprehensive. Two points, however, may be noticed. First, he refers to the Godward aspect of sin, its personal character as an offence against God. Thus he says. "We have dealt very corruptly against Thee." [�ehemiah 1:7] So the prodigal first confesses that he has sinned "against heaven." [Luke 15:18] Secondly, he makes mention more than once of the commandments of Moses. The name of Moses is often appealed to with reverence in the history of this period of Ezra and

�ehemiah. Evidently the minds of men reverted to the great founder of the nation at the time of national penitence and restoration. Under these circumstances no new edition of The Law could have been adopted unless it was believed to have embodied the substance of the older teaching.

After his confession �ehemiah goes on to appeal to the Divine promises of restoration made to the penitent in the great national covenant. He sums them up in a definite sentence, not quoting any one utterance of Deuteronomy, but gathering together the various promises of mercy and dovetailing almost the very language of them together, so as to present us with the total result. These promises recognise the possibility of transgression and the consequent scattering of the people so often insisted on by the prophets and especially by Jeremiah. They then go on to offer restoration on condition of repentance and a return to obedient allegiance. It is to be observed that this is all laid down on national lines. The nation sins; the nation suffers; the nation is restored to its old home. This is very much a characteristic of Judaism, and it gives a breadth to the operation of great religious principles which would otherwise be unattainable when almost all regard for a future life is left out of account. Christianity dwells more on individualism, but it obtains space at once by bringing the future life into prominence. In the Old Testament the future of the nation takes much the same place as that occupied by the future of the individual in the �ew Testament.

In reviewing the history of God’s way with Israel �ehemiah lays his finger on the great fact of redemption. The Jews are the "people whom God had redeemed by His great power and His strong hand." [�ehemiah 1:11] Universal usage compels us to fix upon the exodus under Moses, and not Zerubbabel’s pilgrimage, as the event to which �ehemiah here alludes. That event, which was the birth of the nation, always comes out in Hebrew literature as the supreme act of Divine grace. In some respects its position in the religion of Israel may be likened to that of the cross of Christ in Christianity. In both cases God’s great work of redeeming His children is the supreme proof of His mercy and the grand source of assurance in praying to Him for new help. On the ground of the great redemption �ehemiah advances to the special petition with which his prayer closes. This is most definite. It is on behalf of his own need; it is for immediate help-"this day"; it is for one particular need-in his proposed approach to Artaxerxes to plead the cause of his people. Here then is an instance of the most special prayer. It is "to the point," and for more pressing present requirements. We cannot but be struck with the reality of such a prayer. Having reached this definite petition �ehemiah closes abruptly.

When we glance back over the prayer as a whole, we are struck with its order and progress. As in our Lord’s model prayer, the first part is absorbed with thoughts of God; it is after uplifting his thoughts to heaven that the worshipper comes down to human need. Then a large place is given to sin. This comes first in the consideration of man after the worshipper has turned his eyes from the contemplation of God and felt the contrast of darkness after light. Lastly, the human subjects of the prayer begin in the wider circle of the whole nation; only at the very last, in little more than a sentence, �ehemiah brings forward his own personal petition. Thus the prayer

gradually narrows down from the Divine to the human, and from the national to the individual, as it narrows it becomes more definite, till it ends in a single point, but this point is driven home by the weight and force of all that precedes.

�ISBET, "A PATRIOT’S PRAYER‘I … fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven.’�ehemiah 1:4It was an evidence of �ehemiah’s piety that the news from Judah troubled him deeply. His mourning continued for four months. He fasted, as did also Daniel, Esther, Ezra. Distance from the city of Jerusalem did not lessen his grief. He had probably never seen the city, and was enjoying great prosperity himself, but he was not indifferent to the distress of his people there. True piety is unselfishness, sympathy, helpfulness.

I. He did more than fast. That may express but cannot relieve our distress. He found relief and deliverance through prayer.—�o trouble can overwhelm those who know God as the hearer and answerer of prayer. The favour �ehemiah desired could be granted only by Artaxerxes; but the most direct way to his heart was by prayer to God.

The prayer of �ehemiah includes adoration. We tell out what God is in prayer, not for His information, but for our encouragement. A deep reverential spirit is necessary to the exercise of strong faith. Confession. He identifies himself with his people, so that their sins become his own. Confession gives glory to God by acknowledging the justice of His chastisements, and by recognising the absence of all merit on our part. Argument. Drawn first from God’s promises, and next from His former dealings with His people. God will not violate his word, nor forsake His people. That He has done so much is a proper reason for expecting more. Petition. The plan he had formed needed the favour of the king; this is his definite request.

II. As a model, �ehemiah’s prayer is very valuable, for the persistency, ‘day and night,’ with which he prayed, and the patience which he exercised, and which waited three or four months for the answer; these are necessary to successful prayer.

Illustration

‘Surely it is sad indeed if the sorrows of the world do not make us sad. God sends His angel still through the cities to set a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. Do you ask what the mark is? It is God’s way of taking the measure for a crown. Yearning pity for men is the truest mark of sympathy with Christ, and is the truest fitness for service. It is well, indeed, when personal interest leads us to mourn. But it is ill when the mourning stops short of importunate prayer. ‘I prayed before the God of heaven.” Let sorrow for the sins and sorrows of the world drive us to God; there we find what �ehemiah found—the precious promises and the presence of Him who now and here doth wipe away all tears from the eyes. He is the man ready for service

whose yearning pity has driven him to God, and who comes forth calm and triumphant, leaning upon the arm of the Almighty. Do not let personal interest end in sorrow.’

MACLARE�, "THE CHURCH A�D SOCIAL EVILS�ehemiah 1:4.�inety years had passed since the returning exiles had arrived at Jerusalem. They had encountered many difficulties which had marred their progress and cooled their enthusiasm. The Temple, indeed, was rebuilt, but Jerusalem lay in ruins, and its walls remained as they had been left, by �ebuchadnezzar’s siege, some century and a half before. A little party of pious pilgrims had gone from Persia to the city, and had come back to Shushan with a sad story of weakness and despondency, affliction and hostility. One of the travellers had a brother, a youth named �ehemiah, who was a cup-bearer in the court of the Persian king. Living in a palace, and surrounded with luxury, his heart was with his brethren; and the ruins of Jerusalem were dearer to him than the pomp of Shushan.

My text tells how the young cupbearer was affected by the tidings, and how he wept and prayed before God. The accurate dates given in this book show that this period of brooding contemplation of the miseries of his brethren lasted for four months. Then he took a great resolution, flung up brilliant prospects, identified himself with the afflicted colony, and asked for leave to go and share, and, if it might be, to redress, the sorrows which had made so deep a dint upon his heart.�ow, I think that this vivid description, drawn by himself, of the emotions excited in �ehemiah by his countrymen’s sorrows, which influenced his whole future, contains some very plain lessons for Christian people, the observance of which is every day becoming more imperative by reason of the drift of public opinion, and the new prominence which is being given to so-called ‘social questions.’ I wish to gather up one or two of these lessons for you now.I. First, then, note the plain Christian duty of sympathetic contemplation of surrounding sorrows. �ehemiah might have made a great many very good excuses for treating lightly the tidings that his brother had brought him. He might have said: ‘Jerusalem is a long way off. I have my own work to do; it is no part of my business to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. I am the King’s cupbearer. They went with their eyes open, and experience has shown that the people who knew when they were well off, and stayed where they were, were a great deal wiser.’ These were not his excuses. He let the tidings fill his heart, and burn there.�ow, the first condition of sympathy is knowledge; and the second is attending to what we do know. �ehemiah had probably known, in a kind of vague way, for many a day how things were going in Palestine. Communications between it and Persia were not so difficult but that there would come plenty of Government despatches; and a man at headquarters who had the ear of the monarch, was not likely to be ignorant of what was going on in that part of his dominions. But there is all the difference between hearing vague general reports, and sitting and hearing your own brother tell you what he had seen with his own eyes. So the impression which had

existed before was all inoperative until it was kindled by attention to the facts which all the time had been, in some degree, known.�ow, how many of us are there that know-and don’t know-what is going on round about us in the slums and back courts of this city? How many of us are there who are habitually ignorant of what we actually know, because we never, as we say, ‘give heed’ to it. ‘I did not think of that,’ is a very poor excuse about matters concerning which there is knowledge, whether there is thought or not. And so I want to press upon all you Christian people the plain duty of knowing what you do know, and of giving an ample place in your thoughts to the stark staring facts around us.Why! loads of people at present seem to think that the miseries, and hideous vices, and sodden immorality, and utter heathenism, which are found down amongst the foundations of every civic community are as indispensable to progress as the noise of the wheels of a train is to its advancement, or as the bilge-water in a wooden ship is to keep its seams tight. So we prate about ‘civilisation,’ which means turning men into cities. If agglomerating people into these great communities, which makes so awful a feature of modern life, be necessarily attended by such abominations as we live amongst and never think about, then, better that there had never been civilisation in such a sense at all. Every consideration of communion with and conformity to Jesus Christ, of loyalty to His words, of a true sense of brotherhood and of lower things-such as self-interest-every consideration demands that Christian people shall take to their hearts, in a fashion that the churches have never done yet, ‘the condition of England question,’ and shall ask, ‘Lord! what wouldst Thou have me to do?’ I do not care to enter upon controversy raised by recent utterances, the motive of which may be worthy of admiration, though the expression cannot be acquitted of the charge of exaggeration, to the effect that the Christian churches as a whole have been careless of the condition of the people. It is not true in its absolute sense. I suppose that, taking the country over, the majority of the members of, at all events the �onconformist churches and congregations, are in receipt of weekly wages or belong to the upper ranks of the working-classes, and that the lever which has lifted them to these upper ranks has been God’s Gospel. I suppose it will be admitted that the past indifference with which we are charged belonged to the whole community, and that the new sense of responsibility which has marked, and blessedly marked, recent years, is largely owing to political and other causes which have lately come into operation. I suppose it will not be denied that, to a very large extent, any efforts which have been made in the past for the social, intellectual, and moral, and religious elevation of the people have had their impulse, and to a large extent their support, both pecuniary and active, from Christian churches and individuals. All that is perfectly true and, I believe, undeniable. But it is also true that there remains an enormous, shameful, dead mass of inertness in our churches, and that, unless we can break up that, the omens are bad, bad for society, worse for the church. If cholera is raging in the slums, the suburbs will not escape. If the hovels are infected, the mansions will have to pay their tribute to the disease. If we do not recognise the brotherhood of the suffering and the sinful, in any other fashion-’Then,’ as a great teacher told us a generation ago now, and nobody paid any attention to him, ‘then they will begin and show you that they are your brethren by killing some of you.’ And so self-preservation conjoins with loftier motives to make this sympathetic observation of the surrounding sorrows the plainest of

Christian duties.II. Secondly, such a realisation of the dark facts is indispensable to all true work for alleviating them.There is no way of helping men out by bearing what they bear. �o man will ever lighten a sorrow of which he has not himself felt the pressure. Jesus Christ’s Cross, to which we are ever appealing as the ground of our redemption and the anchor of our hope, is these, thank God! But it is more than these. It is the pattern for our lives, and it lays down, with stringent accuracy and completeness, the enduring conditions of helping the sinful and the sorrowful. The ‘saviours of society’ have still, in lower fashion, to be crucified. Jesus Christ would never have been ‘the Lamb of God that bore away the sins of the world’ unless He Himself had ‘taken our infirmities and borne our sicknesses.’ �o work of any real use will be done except by those whose hearts have bled with the feeling of the miseries which they set themselves to cure.Oh! we all want a far fuller realisation of that sympathetic spirit of the pitying Christ, if we are ever to be of any use in the world, or to help the miseries of any of our brethren. Such a sorrowful and participating contemplation of men’s sorrows springing from men’s sins will give tenderness to our words, will give patience, will soften our whole bearing. Help that is flung to people, as you might fling a bone to a dog, hurts those whom it tries to help, and patronising help is help that does little good, and lecturing help does little more. You must take blind beggars by the hand if you are going to make them see; and you must not be afraid to lay your white, clean fingers upon the feculent masses of corruption in the leper’s glistening whiteness if you are going to make him whole. Go down in order to lift, and remember that without sympathy there is no sufficient help, and without communion with Christ there is no sufficient sympathy.III. Thirdly, such realisation of surrounding sorrows should drive to communion with God.�ehemiah wept and mourned, and that was well. But between his weeping and mourning and his practical work there had to be still another link of connection. ‘He wept and mourned,’ and because he was sad he turned to God, ‘and I fasted and prayed certain days.’ There he got at once comfort for his sorrows, his sympathies, and deepening of his sympathies, and thence he drew inspiration that made him a hero and a martyr. So all true service for the world must begin with close communion with God.There was a book published several years since which made a great noise in its little day, and called itself The Service of Man, which service it proposed to substitute for the effete conception of worship as the service of God. The service of man is, then, best done when it is the service of God. I suppose nowadays it is ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘narrow,’ which is the sin of sins at present, but I for my part have very little faith in the persistence and wide operation of any philanthropic motives except the highest-namely, compassion caught from Jesus Christ. I do not believe that you will get men, year in and year out, to devote themselves in any considerable numbers to the service of man unless you appeal to this highest of motives. You may enlist a little corps-and God forbid that I should deny such a plain fact-of selecter spirits to do purely secular alleviative work, with an entire ignoring of Christian motives, but you will never get the army of workers that is needed to grapple with the facts of

our present condition, unless you touch the very deepest springs of conduct, and these are to be found in communion with God. All the rest is surface drainage. Get down to the love of God, and the love of men therefrom, and you have got an Artesian well which will bubble up unfailingly.And I have not much faith in remedies which ignore religion, and are brought, without communion with God, as sufficient for the disease. I do not want to say one word that might seem to depreciate what are good and valid and noble efforts in their several spheres. There is no need for antagonism-rather, Christian men are bound by every consideration to help to the utmost of their power, even in the incomplete attempts that are made to grapple with social problems. There is room enough for us all. But sure I am that until grapes and waterbeds cure smallpox, and a spoonful of cold water puts out Vesuvius, you will not cure the evils of the body politic by any lesser means than the application of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.We hear a great deal to-day about a ‘social gospel,’ and I am glad of the conception, and of the favour which it receives. Only let us remember that the Gospel is social second, and individual first. And that if you get the love of God and obedience to Jesus Christ into a man’s heart it will be like putting gas into a balloon, it will go up, and the man will get out of the slums fast enough; and he will not be a slave to the vices of the world much longer, and you will have done more for him and for the wide circle that he may influence than by any other means. I do not want to depreciate any helpers, but I say it is the work of the Christian church to carry to the world the only thing that will make men deeply and abidingly happy, because it will make them good.IV. And so, lastly, such sympathy should be the parent of a noble, self-sacrificing life.Look at the man in our text. He had the ball at his feet. He had the entree of a court, and the ear of a king. Brilliant prospects were opening before him, but his brethren’s sufferings drew him, and with a noble resolution of self-sacrifice, he shut himself out from the former and went into the wilderness. He is one of the Scripture characters that never have had due honour-a hero, a saint, a martyr, a reformer. He did, though in a smaller sphere, the very same thing that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews magnified with his splendid eloquence, in reference to the great Lawgiver, ‘And chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God,’ and to turn his back upon the dazzlements of a court, than to ‘enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,’ whilst his brethren were suffering.�ow, dear friends! the letter of the example may be put aside; the spirit of it must be observed. If Christians are to do the work that they can do, and that Christ has put them into this world that they may do, there must be self-sacrifice with it. There is no shirking that obligation, and there is no discharging our duty without it. You and I, in our several ways, are as much under the sway of that absolute law, that ‘if a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it brings forth fruit,’ as ever was Jesus Christ or His Apostles. I have nothing to say about the manner of the sacrifice. It is no part of my business to prescribe to you details of duty. It is my business to insist on the principles which must regulate these, and of these principles in application to Christian service there is none more stringent than-’I will not offer unto my God burnt-offering of that which doth cost me nothing.’I am sure that, under God, the great remedy for social evils lies mainly here, that the

bulk of professing Christians shall recognise and discharge their responsibilities. It is not ministers, city missionaries, Bible-women, or any other paid people that can do the work. It is by Christian men and by Christian women, and, if I might use a very vulgar distinction which has a meaning in the present connection, very specially by Christian ladies, taking their part in the work amongst the degraded and the outcasts, that our sorest difficulties and problems will be solved. If a church does not face these, well, all I can say is, its light will go out; and the sooner the better. ‘If thou forbear to deliver them that are appointed to death, and say, Behold! I knew it not, shall not He that weigheth the hearts consider it, and shall He not render to every man according to his work?’ And, on the other hand, there are no blessings more rich, select, sweet, and abiding, than are to be found in sharing the sorrow of the Man of Sorrows, and carrying the message of His pity and His redemption to an outcast world. ‘If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, the Lord shall satisfy thy soul; and thou shalt be as a watered garden, and as a spring of water whose waters fail not.’

5 Then I said:“Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments,

CLARKE, "Lord God of heaven - What was, before the captivity, Jehovah, God of hosts or armies.

Great - Able to do mighty things.

Terrible - able to inflict the heaviest judgments.

GILL, "And said, I beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven,.... He prayed not to the host of heaven, the sun in it, as the Persians, but to the God of it, in an humble supplicant manner:

the great and terrible God; who is to be feared, and had in reverence of all his creatures, because of his greatness and glory, being God over all, blessed for ever, and his name holy and reverend:

that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him, and observe his commandments; who keep them from a principle of love to him; to those he has made

gracious promises in his covenant, which he truly and faithfully performs; and the consideration of these perfections in God animates and encourages good men in prayer to him.

HE�RY, "We have here Nehemiah's prayer, a prayer that has reference to all the prayers which he had for some time before been putting up to God day and night, while he continued his sorrows for the desolations of Jerusalem, and withal to the petition he was now intending to present to the king his master for his favour to Jerusalem. We may observe in this prayer,

I. His humble and reverent address to God, in which he prostrates himself before him, and gives unto him the glory due unto his name, Neh_1:5. It is much the same with that of Daniel, Dan_9:4. It teaches us to draw near to God, 1. With a holy awe of his majesty and glory, remembering that he is the God of heaven, infinitely above us, and sovereign Lord over us, and that he is the great and terrible God, infinitely excelling all the principalities and powers both of the upper and of the lower world, angels and kings; and he is a God to be worshipped with fear by all his people, and whose powerful wrath all his enemies have reason to be afraid of. Even the terrors of the Lord are improvable for the comfort and encouragement of those that trust in him. 2. With a holy confidence in his grace and truth, for he keepeth covenant and mercy for those that love him, not only the mercy that is promised, but even more than he promised: nothing shall be thought too much to be done for those that love him and keep his commandments.

K&D, "Nehemiah's prayer, as given in these verses, comprises the prayers which he prayed day and night, during the period of his mourning and fasting (Neh_1:4 comp. Neh_1:6), to his faithful and covenant God, to obtain mercy for his people, and the divine blessing upon his project for their assistance.

Neh_1:5

The invocation of Jahve as: Thou God of heaven, alludes to God's almighty government of the world, and the further predicates of God, to His covenant faithfulness. “Thou great and terrible God” recalls Deu_7:21, and “who keepest covenant and mercy,” etc., Deu_7:9 and Exo_20:5-6.

COFFMA�, "�EHEMIAH'S PRAYER

"I beseech thee, O Jehovah, the God of heaven, the great and terrible God that keepeth covenant and lovingkindness with them that love him and keep his commandments: let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee at this time, day and night, for the children of Israel, thy servants, while I confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee. Yea, I and my father's house have sinned: we have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the ordinances, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses. Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses, saying, If ye trespass, I will scatter you abroad among the peoples: but if ye return unto me, and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts were in the uttermost part of the heavens, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them to the place that I have chosen, to cause my name to dwell there. �ow these are

thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power, and by thy strong hand. O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants, who delight to fear thy name; and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man."

"If ye trespass, I will scatter you abroad among the peoples" (�ehemiah 1:8). Here �ehemiah was remembering the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 30:1-8.

This is a fervent beautiful prayer, and there's not a word in it that suggests any other person than �ehemiah as the author of it. Yet the critics who profess to know everything, and who are unable to find any dependable record whatever in the Holy Bible, declare this prayer to be fraudulently ascribed to �ehemiah. Hamrick stated that, "This prayer is probably not a verbatim quotation from �ehemiah."[18] And Oesterley even professed to know who wrote it! "The Chronicler took this prayer from the Temple liturgy and put it into the mouth of �ehemiah"![19] It is difficult to imagine a more arrogant conceit than that which produces such comments. Where is there any prayer in the Temple liturgy that duplicates this? It simply does not exist.

"There was a grave personal risk to �ehemiah in his decision to champion the cause of the distressed citizens in Jerusalem, because his master Artaxerxes I had already accepted the charge of the Samaritans that Jerusalem was a bad and rebellious city (See Ezra 4:17-22); and any request of �ehemiah of Artaxerxes would involve asking him to rescind a decree that he himself had made only a few years previously."[20]

"And grant him mercy in the sight of this man" (�ehemiah 1:11). Speaking of himself in the third person here, �ehemiah prays that God will grant him mercy before the king. "What man he means is explained by the following supplementary remark, `And I was cupbearer to the king,' without whose favor and permission �ehemiah could not have carried out his intention."[21]

"Mercy is what �ehemiah prays for, especially mercy from God, as he makes his petition before Artaxerxes."[22] It is significant that �ehemiah in this prayer did not speak of Artaxerxes as `the king,' but as 'this man.' "Such expressions as `a man,' or `this man,'" according to Oesterley, "Come from a Hebrew word that carries `a note of contempt."'[23] Perhaps �ehemiah was thinking that, "After all the great king is only a man, subject in every way to the will of God."

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:5 And said, I beseech thee, O LORD God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments:

Ver. 5. I beseech thee, O Lord] Annah Jehovah; an insinuating preface; whereby he seeketh first to get in with God speaking him fair; as doth likewise David, in a real and heavenly compliment, Psalms 116:16. Obsecro Iehovah, I beseech, O Lord (I am

thy servant, I am thy servant, the son of thine handmaid), break thou my bands. So the Church, Isaiah 64:9, "Behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people."

The great and terrible God] A great King above all gods, Exodus 15:11. Aξιωµατικωτατς εστιν ο βασιλευς ηµων, saith a Greek father: "glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders," saith Moses in one place; as in another, "The Lord our God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible," Deuteronomy 10:17. Vere verendus et venerandus. Truly reverence and will worship. Thus �ehemiah begins his prayer, and counts it a great mercy that he may creep in at a corner, and present himself before this most majestic Monarch of the world with greatest self-abasement.

That keepeth covenant and mercy] That he may at once both tremble before him and trust upon him; he describeth God by his goodness as well as by greatness, and so helpeth his own faith by contemplating God’s faithfulness and lovingkindness. God hath hitherto kept covenant with heaven and earth, with nights and days, Jeremiah 33:20; Jeremiah 33:25, that one shall succeed the other; and shall he break with his people? no, verily. Be sure to keep faith in heart, or you will pray but poorly. And for this, learn in the preface to your prayers to propound God to yourselves in such notions, and under such terms and titles, as may most conduce thereunto, pleading the covenant.

That love him and observe his commandments] That love to be his servants, Isaiah 56:6, that wait for his law, Isaiah 42:4, that think upon his commandments to do them, Psalms 103:18.

PARKER, "And whilst he wept he prayed. He said:

"I beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments: let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant" ( �ehemiah 1:5-6).

Sometimes we are shut up in prayer. When we are, we are inclined to debate the whole subject, as we call it—the whole subject of prayer. But when the Zion of our heart is thrown down, the dearest life of our whole circle is torn out, when we are blind with tears and weak because of bereavement, then we do not debate about prayer—we pray. If you want to prove the hollowness of prayer, do your best to pray sincerely for seven years at a time, and that is the way either to confirm or to upset the whole doctrine of prayer. To have told �ehemiah at this time not to pray would have only exposed the speaker to the charge of insanity. There are times when the heart takes everything into its own care and into its own keeping, and when prayer bursts from the heart irrepressibly. And it is in these agonies, in these

tragic hours, in these blood-shedding moments, that we can tell whether prayer is a conception of the fancy or a necessity of the heart. How true and beautiful is that priestly element in a man"s nature—for we contend that every man"s constitution is touched with tragic circumstances—when conditions in which he is personally most keenly interested are pressed upon his attention.

"Then I stood and prayed,"—the natural priest, not ordained of man. As Macaulay said of the Puritans, so we may say of this praying �ehemiah: "He is a priest, not of man"s ordination, but by the imposition of a mightier hand." Have you ever prayed for anybody? Has the priest that is in you, in the best sense of the term, in the sense of intercession, mediation, longing desire to serve somebody, ever risen up to plead one cause with God? If Song of Solomon , in that high attitude you realise, so far as your poor nature can reach him, the true conception of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. "He ever liveth to make intercession for us." "There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

What does �ehemiah do in relation to this matter? He takes the case to head-quarters at once, and in doing so he openly, minutely, fully, exhaustively, unreservedly, confesses guilt. That is the first thing to be done in any case. Did �ehemiah say, "Lord, we have been badly used: in the course of this controversy with Babylon we have suffered as the weak suffer under the hand of the strong. We have not deserved our punishment; it has been our misfortune rather than our fault to find ourselves in these circumstances; now be good enough to look upon us and help us in this hour of undeserved calamity"? Was that his prayer, was that his intercession, was that his supplication? It would have died before it reached the roof of his own chamber; that is not the prayer that throws back the doors of the kingdom of heaven. The man shed as it were great drops of blood, and his whole heart was in his desire, and he spoke in anguish, with that clear, keen, poignant voice that would find its way through the interstices of the stars, and make God hear. How have you prayed? Artistically, formally, conventionally? You never sent out the heart as a keen cry of unsupportable agony to God for anything that was consistent for him to give and good for you to receive without that cry coming back, dove-like, with a branch from some tree in heaven. �ehemiah"s was a model confession. There was no disguise, no reserve. He made a clean breast of it. Do you the same, about your theft, and your lying, and your untruthfulness in every way, and your dishonourableness. Set a window of the most beautiful transparent glass right in the very middle of your breast, that all that is going on there may be seen. Confess it, and confession itself is half restoration. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." Whilst we confess he remits. But there is no peace to the wicked. If you are keeping back any part of the price, he will keep back the whole of the blessing.

�ow, he said, I will go and see the king. "Grant me mercy in the sight of this Prayer of Manasseh , O Lord." I will do something. And it came to pass in the month �isan that he went in—about the same time as our March. He got the news in December, and for three months he kept it like a fire in his bones. Well, it does seem as if in March we could speak about better things. Has the spring any effect upon us? It

does seem that about March or April, when the blossoms are just beginning to peep out here and there, as if we too—nobler trees—should be putting forth our vows, and resolutions, and purposes. We do not wonder that men should at such a time be speaking things that they had in their hearts in the cold December, and seeking to realise them in some beautiful and useful way. We cannot always speak the thing that is in us. Some things want three months" musing and meditation and turning over. "I mused in my heart, and the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue," and that which was buried in our hearts in December snow awoke up in the March breezes and longer light of the opening year, and shed itself into those who were about us.

How long has the vow to serve Christ been in your heart? Where is the vow now? We fear lest you should exclaim: "The harvest is past, and the summer is ended, and I am not saved!" �o one could reproach you for keeping the vow awhile in your heart; rather let it rest there awhile—work in thee mightily—presently we shall see that vow coming out in open speech, in high declaration for God.

PARKER, ""Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"And said, I beseech thee."— �ehemiah 1:5.

The subject is Remembered Prayers.—�ehemiah here cites, to all appearance, the very terms which he used in addressing the heavenly throne.—It is not necessary, however, to recollect the precise words in order to enjoy a refreshing memory of the intercourse which we have had with God.—The intercourse, indeed, is not in the words at all, but in the thoughts which those words endeavour to convey.—It would be proper for us to give new words to the old thoughts; and, provided we faithfully represented the thoughts, we should be entitled to say that we had quoted the prayer.—There are prayers which we can never forget—prayers in personal extremity, prayers in the sick-chamber, prayers on battlefields, prayers for those in whose lives our own were involved, and without whom it seemed impossible for us to live. The memorable prayers do not throw into insignificance the prayers which are not so precisely remembered.—In prayer, as in everything else, there must be long ranges of comparative flatness; only now and then do we ascend the high mountains and enjoy the breezes that blow there from the gates of heaven.—Unhappy is the man who has no prayers to remember—the man who can only go back in his memory to find a dim record of frivolous expressions, foolish plans, unwise attempts to be wise, and a whole store of things, not one of which is of any value.—Lay up in memory, for reading, for old age, quotations for time of difficulty; make the soul familiar with prayer, and then we shall have no difficulty in Revelation -living our lives and visiting old altars where we won great victories in the name of Christ.

PETT, "�ehemiah 1:5

His Elaborate Approach To God (�ehemiah 1:5).

In his approach �ehemiah expresses three things which should be a constant in all our praying; the greatness of God, the wonder of His love, and the necessity for obedience to His covenant in accordance with His requirements.

�ehemiah 1:5

‘And said, “I beseech you, O YHWH, the God of heaven, the great and terrible God, who keeps covenant and covenant love with those who love him and keep his commandments.”He speaks with YHWH as the One Who is:

· ‘The God of Heaven’ - contrast ‘Our Father Who is in Heaven’ (Matthew 6:9). There is the same sense of awe, although without that deeper dimension of God as Father that Jesus introduced.· ‘The great and terrible God.’ He acknowledges the greatness of God while at the same time acknowledging that He is not to be approached lightly. He is fearsome. Someone of Whom to be in awe. Compare Daniel 9:4; Exodus 15:11; Deuteronomy 7:21; Deuteronomy 10:17. (Compare ‘Hallowed be your �ame’).· ‘The One Who keeps covenant.’ He comes to God aware that though great and fearsome, He has made His covenant with His people and always observes His side of the covenant. He is ever true to His word. He can therefore be approached by one who desires to observe His covenant (Deuteronomy 7:9).· But He is also ‘The One Who observes covenant love with those Who love Him and keep His commandments.’ His faithfulness is a faithfulness of love, which has been expressed through His covenant, towards those who love Him and keep His commandments (Exodus 20:6; Deuteronomy 5:10; Deuteronomy 7:9). To love God was one of His most important commandments (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). And His commandments were to be laid upon their hearts (Deuteronomy 6:6). But this was because He had first loved them (‘when Israel was a child I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt’ ‘ Hosea 11:1).

LA�GE, "�ehemiah 1:5. Terrible is awe-inspiring,א א the �iphal participle of ,נור יר(to tremble). That keepeth covenant and mercy.—Lit. That keepeth the covenant and mercy, by hendiadys for “the covenant of mercy,” or “the merciful covenant” established in the world’s Messiah, but centrally and typically in the Israelitish system. Observe his commandments—or keep his commandments; the same verb as before. God keeps the covenant for them who keep His commandments. This is not a doctrine of meritorious works, but of adhering faith. See its explanation in John 6:28-29, where the work of God is a sincere faith. The essence of faith is love, whose definition is given in 2 John 1:6. “The great and terrible God” is a phrase borrowed from Deuteronomy 7:21, and “that keepeth—observe his commandments” is from the 9 th verse of the same chapter. The Pentateuch has furnished much of the religious phraseology of the nation in all ages. (Comp. Daniel 9:4.)

PULPIT, "And said, I beseech thee. The opening of �ehemiah's prayer follows so closely the thoughts and words of Daniel's (Daniel 9:4), that it is almost impossible

to suppose that one of the two writers had not the words of the other before him. As there are no sufficient grounds for questioning the generally received date of Daniel's prophecy, we must suppose �ehemiah familiar with his writings, and an admirer of their tone and spirit. In this verse he differs from Daniel only in substituting "Jehovah" for "Lord" (Adonai), and introducing his own favourite phrase "God of heaven."

6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you.

CLARKE, "Let thine ear - Hear what we say and confess.

Thine eyes open - see what we suffer.

GILL, "Let thine ear be now attentive,.... To his prayer, as in Neh_1:11,

and thine eyes open; to behold with pity and compassion the distressed case of Jerusalem, and the Jews in it:

I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servants; this he had continued to do ever since he heard of their trouble and calamity:

and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father's house have sinned; he considered sin as the cause of all this evil that had befallen his people, and confesses it with sorrow and humiliation, and not their sins only, but his own personal and family sins.

HE�RY 6-7, " His general request for the audience and acceptance of all the prayers and confessions he now made to God (Neh_1:6): “Let thy ear be attentive to the prayer,not which I say (barely saying prayer will not serve), but which I pray before thee (then

we are likely to speed in praying when we pray in praying), and let they eyes be openupon the heart from which the prayer comes, and the case which is in prayer laid before thee.” God formed the eye and planted the ear; and therefore shall he not see clearly? shall not he hear attentively?

III. His penitent confession of sin; not only Israel has sinned (it was no great mortification to him to own that), but I and my father's house have sinned, Neh_1:6. Thus does he humble himself, and take shame to himself, in this confession. We have (I and my family among the rest) dealt very corruptly against thee, Neh_1:7. In the confession of sin, let these two things be owned as the malignity of it - that it is a corruption of ourselves and an affront to God; it is dealing corruptly against God,setting up the corruptions of our own hearts in opposition to the commands of God.

K&D, "Neh_1:6

“Let Thine ear be attentive, and Thine eyes open,” like 2Ch_6:40; 2Ch_7:15 - ,לשמע)

that Thou mayest hearken to the prayer of Thy servant, which I pray, and how I confess

concerning ... מת*ה still depends upon אשר in the sense of: and what I confess concerning

the sins. ה�ום does not here mean to-day, but now, at this time, as the addition “day and

night” compared with ימים in Neh_1:4 shows. To strengthen the communicative form (לך

and to acknowledge before God how deeply penetrated he was by the feeling of his ,חטאנו

own sin and guilt, he adds: and I and my father's house have sinned.

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:6 Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father’s house have sinned.

Ver. 6. Let thine ears now be attentive, and thine eyes open] Should not God see as well as hear (saith a divine), his children should want many things. We apprehend not all our wants; and so cannot pray for relief of all. He of his own accord, without any monitor, is wont to aid us. "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous; and his ears are open to their prayer," Psalms 33:15.

That thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant] If not secundum voluntatem, yet ad utilitatem (Aug. Confess. 1. 5, c. 8), but usually God answereth his servants’ prayers, fitting his mercy ad cardinem desiderii, to a longing heart, as here; and letting it be unto them even as they will.

Which I pray before thee now, day and night] Christ requireth his servants and suppliants to pray and not faint, Luke 18:1. Ordinarily, morning and evening without fail; extraordinarily, oftener. The Jews divide their day into prayer, work, and repast; neither will they omit prayer for their meat or labour. The Mahometans, what occasion soever they have, either by profit or pleasure, to divert

them, will pray five times every day; and upon the Friday (which is their sabbath) six times. Vae torpori nostro! woe our numbness, how few and feeble are our prayers for ourselves and for brethren in distress; who have for that cause an unanswerable action against us!

And confess the sins of the children of Israel] This he did more fully and at large than is here set down; and he fitly beginnneth with confession; that having gotten off the guilt of sin, he might with more courage and comfort deprecate wrath, and beg mercy.

Which we have sinned against thee] There lay the pinch of his grief, that they sinned against so good a God.

Both I and my father’s house have sinned] Hic igitur Lyra deliravit, Lyra is incorrect when he saith here, that �ehemiah confessed his own sins, but only as a member of the same body, he himself being innocent. Comparatively innocent he was, doubtless; but that he was not without sin, and such sin as he had cause to confess to be God provoking sins, is clear by this very text. He was sensible of his own sins, and of other men’s sins too. The sins of our ancestors not bewailed and disclaimed, are set upon our score, Daniel 5:22.

BE�SO�, "�ehemiah 1:6. Which I pray before thee night and day — He refers to all the prayers which he had for some time been addressing to God, during his sorrow for the desolations of Jerusalem.

PETT, "�ehemiah 1:6 aHis Plea To Be Heard (�ehemiah 1:6 a).

He calls on God to be attentive to his constant and persevering prayer for God’s people.

�ehemiah 1:6

“Let your ear now be attentive, and your eyes open, that you may listen to the prayer of your servant, which I pray before you at this time, day and night, for the children of Israel your servants,’He prays that God will hear what he has to say, and will see the situation. And that as a result He will listen to his prayer, a prayer from one who is his servant, a prayer which he is bringing before him day and night. He was thus coming in humility, but also in consistent, persevering prayer, in the way in which Jesus would later teach us to pray (Luke 11:5-13). For the idea of attentive ears and open eyes compare 1 Kings 8:28-29; 2 Chronicles 6:40; Psalms 130:2; Isaiah 37:17, and God’s response and required conditions in 2 Chronicles 7:14-15.

And he underlines that he is coming on behalf of ‘the children of Israel’ who are

God’s servants. For ‘children of Israel’ see �ehemiah 2:10; �ehemiah 7:73; �ehemiah 8:14; �ehemiah 8:17; �ehemiah 9:1; �ehemiah 10:39; �ehemiah 13:2. It is a �ehemaic expression. This is, of course, a regular name used for Israel/Judah emphasising their tribal relationship, although literally speaking it is a misnomer. The majority were not strictly directly descended from Jacob by blood, but were ‘sons’ by adoption, being descended:

1) From members of the family tribe (Abraham had 318 young men born in his house).2) From the mixed multitude who had become part of Israel at Sinai (Exodus 12:38).3) From the many other peoples like the Kenites who had joined up with Israel and submitted to YHWH.�ehemiah 1:6-7He Confesses Deeply The Sin Of His People, Including That Of His Own Father’s house (�ehemiah 1:6-7).

Confession of our sins must always be central to our prayers. ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us’. As God says in 2 Chronicles 7:14, ‘if My people who are called by My �ame, will humble themselves, and will pray, and will seek my face, and will turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven, I will forgive their sins, and I will heal their land’. This was what �ehemiah now did.

�ehemiah 1:6

-7 ‘While I confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Yes, I and my father’s house have sinned. We have dealt very corruptly against you, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances, which you commanded your servant Moses.”Confession of sin had long been a requirement of the covenant. The confession of the sins of the children of Israel was one purpose of the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:21), and confession of sin was a requirement for forgiveness of specific sins (Leviticus 5:5). Furthermore confession of sin was one of the requirements if God was to restore His people from captivity (Leviticus 26:40). Thus while he had no sacrifice to offer, and no goat substitute, what �ehemiah could do was confess the sins of his people (see also �ehemiah 9:2; Psalms 32:5; Proverbs 28:13; Daniel 9:20). It was an acknowledgement that Israel had deserved all that had happened to them.

He did not exclude himself from this confession of sins, confessing his own sin and the sins of his father’s house. And he spells out what he means by sin in terms of dealing corruptly with God, and not observing the commandments, statutes and ordinances (judgments) laid down by Moses (compare Deuteronomy 5:31; Deuteronomy 7:11). He makes no excuses.

It is clear from this that �ehemiah was well acquainted with Levitical teaching and Deuteronomic teaching.

�ehemiah 1:6. After this address to Jehovah as the awe-inspiring and yet covenant-keeping God, he asks God to hear him as the representative of his nation. The phrase, let thine ear be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear, is peculiar. It is derived from Solomon’s prayer ( 1 Kings 8:29; 1 Kings 8:52), and has reference, doubtless, to the greater attention paid by the ear when the eyes are opened towards the source of the sound.

�ow, day and night.—Lit. to-day, day and night. His prayer was oft repeated in the course of these days of separation and mourning at hours of the night, as well as at the usual hours of daily prayer. Which we have sinned.—�ehemiah has a clear sense of his identification with his people in sin as in misery. Both I and my father’s house have sinned.—From this mention of his father’s house we have a strong reason to believe that �ehemiah was of the royal house of Judah. It is hard to understand his special mention of his father’s house, unless it had been a conspicuous family in the nation. (See the Introduction.)

PULPIT, "Both I and my father's house have sinned. Ewald well observes, "In the prayer of �ehemiah the keynote is struck in the words, 'I and my father's house have sinned'". The desolation which he mourns is the result of the people's sins, and in those sins are included his own, and those of his ancestors. His own may not have been very grievous, but those of his fathers weigh upon him as if his own, and oppress his spirit.

7 We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.

CLARKE, "Have not kept thy commandments - The moral precepts by which our lives should be regulated.

Statutes - What refers to the rites and ceremonies of thy religion.

Judgments - The precepts of justice relative to our conduct to each other.

GILL, "We have dealt very corruptly against thee,.... Corrupted his covenant, laws, and precepts, as well as themselves, ways, and works; all which were against the Lord, contrary to his nature, mind, and will:

and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses; the laws, moral, ceremonial, and judicial.

K&D, "Neh_1:7

We have dealt very corruptly against Thee. חבל is the inf. constr. instead of the infin.

abs., which, before the finite verb, and by reason of its close connection therewith,

becomes the infin. constr., like אהיה Psa_50:21; comp. Ewald, §240, c. The dealing ,היות

corruptly against God consists in not having kept the commandments, statutes, and judgments of the law.

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:7 We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses.

Ver. 7. We have dealt very corruptly] Heb. Corrupting, we have corrupted ourselves against thee. Or, We have bound ourselves unto thee to be punished for our sins. Of confessing with utmost aggravation, and laying load upon ourselves, see the notes on Ezra 9:1-15. {See Trapp on "Ezra 9:1"} &c.

And have not kept the commandments, nor statutes, nor judgments] i.e. �either the laws moral, ceremonial, nor judicial. We have broken all thy bonds, and cast thy cords from us.

WHEDO�, "7. Commandments… statutes… judgments — Embracing respectively the moral precepts, like the ten commandments, the established rites and ceremonies of worship, and the judicial decision in respect to sin and righteousness.

Thy servant Moses — Moses and the law were then associated as now, and here is evidence that the Pentateuch was familiar to �ehemiah. Compare the marginal references in the next two verses.

LA�GE, "�ehemiah 1:7. The commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments.—Heb.: eth-hammitzoth weth-hahukkim weth-hammishpatim. It is almost impossible to draw the distinction between the meanings of these three words. They were probably used in the fulness of the legal style. Commandment, statute and judgment are the nearest English equivalents, but here they are all subjected to the verb corresponding to the first noun (“command”), and we must thus loosely refer them to the various forms of the divine commandments. The 119

th Psalm seems to use these words as synonymous. (See on �ehemiah 9:13-14.)

PULPIT, "We have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments. The ordinances of the Law are frequently summed up under these three heads (Deuteronomy 5:31; Deuteronomy 6:1; Deuteronomy 11:1, etc.); but it would be a mistake to regard them as constituting a logical division of the various precepts contained in the Pentateuch, or to suppose that every precept is to be referred absolutely to one or other of the three.

8 “Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations,

CLARKE, "Thy servant Moses - See the parallel places in Lev_26:33 (note), Deu_4:25-27 (note), Deu_28:64 (note), and the notes there. Though in an enemy’s country, and far from the ordinances of God, Nehemiah did not forget the law: he read his Bible well, and quotes correctly.

GILL, "Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses,.... To publish and declare to the children of Israel, Deu_28:64,

saying, if ye transgress; the law of God:

I will scatter you abroad among the nations; as now they had been among the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Medes, and Persians.

HE�RY 8-9, " The pleas he urges for mercy for his people Israel.

1. He pleads what God had of old said to them, the rule he had settled of his proceedings towards them, which might be the rule of their expectations from him, Neh_1:8, Neh_1:9. He had said indeed that, if they broke covenant with him, he would scatter them among the nations, and that threatening was fulfilled in their captivity: never was people so widely dispersed as Israel was at this time, though at first so closely incorporated; but he had said withal that if they turned to him (as now they began to do, having renounced idolatry and kept to the temple service) he would gather them again.This he quotes from Deu_30:1-5, and begs leave to put God in mind of it (though the Eternal Mind needs no remembrancer) as that which he guided his desires by, and grounded his faith and hope upon, in praying this prayer: Remember, I beseech thee,

that word; for thou hast said, Put me in remembrance. He had owned (Neh_1:7), We have not kept the judgments which thou commandedst thy servant Moses; yet he begs (Neh_1:8), Lord, remember the word which thou commandedst thy servant Moses; for the covenant is often said to be commanded. If God were not more mindful of his promises than we are of his precepts we should be undone. Our best pleas therefore in prayer are those that are taken from the promise of God, the word on which he has caused us to hope, Psa_119:49.

K&D, "Neh_1:8-10With his confession of grievous transgression, Nehemiah combines the petition that

the Lord would be mindful of His word declared by Moses, that if His people, whom He had scattered among the heathen for their sins, should turn to Him and keep His commandments, He would gather them from all places where He had scattered them, and bring them back to the place which He had chosen to place His name there. This

word (ה*בר) he designates, as that which God had commanded to His servant Moses,

inasmuch as it formed a part of that covenant law which was prescribed to the Israelites

as their rule of life. The matter of this word is introduced by לאמר: ye transgress, I will

scatter; i.e., if ye transgress by revolting from me, I will scatter you among the nations, -and ye turn to me and keep my commandments (i.e., if ye turn to me and ... ), if there were of you cast out to the end of heaven (i.e., to the most distant regions where the end

of heaven touches the earth), thence will I gather you, etc. נ*ח, pat. Niphal, with a

collective meaning, cast-out ones, like Deu_30:4. These words are no verbal quotation, but a free summary, in which Nehemiah had Deu_30:1-5 chiefly in view, of what God had proclaimed in the law of Moses concerning the dispersion of His people among the heathen if they sinned against Him, and of their return to the land of their fathers if they repented and turned to Him. The clause: if the cast-out ones were at the end of heaven, etc., stands verbally in Neh_1:4. The last words, Neh_1:9, “(I will bring them) to the place which I have chosen, that my name may dwell there,” are a special application of the general promise of the law to the present case. Jerusalem is meant, where the Lord caused His name to dwell in the temple; comp. Deu_12:11. The entreaty to remember this word and to fulfil it, seems ill adapted to existing circumstances, for a portion of the people were already brought back to Jerusalem; and Nehemiah's immediate purpose was to pray, not for the return of those still sojourning among the heathen, but for the removal of the affliction and reproach resting on those who were now at Jerusalem. Still less appropriate seems the citation of the words: If ye transgress, I will scatter you among the nations. It must, however, be remembered that Nehemiah is not so much invoking the divine compassion as the righteousness and faithfulness of a covenant God, the great and terrible God that keepeth covenant and mercy (Neh_1:5). Now this, God had shown Himself to be, by fulfilling the threats of His law that He would scatter His faithless and transgressing people among the nations. Thus His fulfilment of this one side of the covenant strengthened the hope that God would also keep His other covenant word to His people who turned to Him, viz., that He would bring them again to the land of their fathers, to the place of His gracious presence. Hence the reference to the dispersion of the nation among the heathen, forms the actual substructure for the request that so much of the promise as yet remained unfulfilled might come to pass. Nehemiah, moreover, views this promise in the full depth of its import, as securing to Israel not merely an external return to their native land, but their restoration as a

community, in the midst of whom the Lord had His dwelling, and manifested Himself as the defence and refuge of His people. To the re-establishment of this covenant relation very much was still wanting. Those who had returned from captivity had indeed settled in the land of their fathers; and the temple in which they might worship God with sacrifices, according to the law, was rebuilt at Jerusalem. But notwithstanding all this, Jerusalem, with its ruined walls and burned gates, was still like a city lying waste, and exposed to attacks of all kinds; while the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah were loaded with shame and contempt by their heathen neighbours. In this sense, Jerusalem was not yet restored, and the community dwelling therein not yet brought to the place where the name of the Lord dwelt. In this respect, the promise that Jahve would again manifest Himself to His repentant people as the God of the covenant was still unfulfilled, and the petition that He would gather His people to the place which He had chosen to put His name there, i.e., to manifest Himself according to His nature, as testified in His covenant (Exo_34:6-7), quite justifiable. In Neh_1:10 Nehemiah supports his petition by the words: And these (now dwelling in Judah and Jerusalem) are Thy servants and Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed, etc. His servants who worship Him in His temple, His people whom He has redeemed from Egypt by His great power and by His strong arm, God cannot leave in affliction and reproach. The words: “redeemed with great power” ... are reminiscences from Deu_7:8; Deu_9:26, Deu_9:29, and other passages in the Pentateuch, and refer to the deliverance from Egypt.

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:8 Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses, saying, [If] ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations:

Ver. 8. Remember, I beseech thee, the word] It befalleth not the Lord to forget or remember (to speak properly), for all things are present with him. �evertheless metaphorically God is said to do both; as when, being provoked by the horrid sins of the Jews, he so punished them as if he had forgotten that they were his people, or that he had ever made them any promises. And in this case God gives his prophets and praying people leave to be his remembrancers, Isaiah 62:6-7. Ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, keep not silence, and give him no rest till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. This �ehemiah doth here most vigorously, and sped accordingly; let us do likewise. Cast the labouring Church into God’s everlasting arms, and remind him of his promises burden him with them, as that martyr said; put them into suit, they are nigh the Lord day and night, 1 Kings 8:59. Say, remember thy word unto thy servant, whereupon thou hast caused me to trust, Psalms 119:49. And in the want of other rhetoric urge this, with repetition, Lord, thou hast promised, thou hast promised, &c. He loves to be urged with his word, to be used upon his bond, &c.

The word that thou commandest, &c.] The threatening is also to be acknowledged God’s word, as well as the promise; and the uprightness of our hearts is, to be approving by believing the one as well as the other. Sour and sweet make the best sauce; promises and menaces mingled serve to keep the heart in the best temper, as �ehemiah’s was.

PETT, "�ehemiah 1:8-9

He Appeals To God On The Basis Of His Covenant Promises (�ehemiah 1:8-9).

He now calls on God to be mindful of His word and of His promises.

�ehemiah 1:8-9

“Remember, I beseech you, the word that you command your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you trespass, I will scatter you abroad among the peoples, but if you return to me, and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts were in the uttermost part of the heavens, yet will I gather them from there, and will bring them to the place which I have chosen, to cause my name to dwell there.’ ”Thus he reminds God of His promises. Promises made to Moses as to what would happen if when His people had trespassed and were scattered abroad, they returned to Him and kept His commandments and did them. His promise had been that no matter how far they had been scattered, even to the uttermost part of Heaven, he would gather them from there and bring them to the place which He had chosen to cause His �ame to dwell there.

This is not a direct quotation from Moses, but a summary of what God had promised that He would do, based on Scriptural terminology. Especially in mind is Deuteronomy 30:1-4. ‘(If, having trespassed and) beenscattered abroad among all the nations---you shall return to YHWH your God, and shall obey His voice according to all that I command you this day (keep His commandments and do them), --- ifany of your outcasts be in the uttermost parts of the heavens, ,i.from there will YHWH your God gather you --- andwill bring you into the landwhich your fathers possessed, and you will possess it.’

This is supplemented by, ‘andYHWH will scatter you among the peoples’(Deuteronomy 4:27; compare Leviticus 26:33; Deuteronomy 28:64); ‘you shall keep My commandments and do them’(Leviticus 22:31; Leviticus 26:3; compare Deuteronomy 19:9); and‘the place which I have chosen to cause My �ame to dwell there’(Deuteronomy 12:11). ‘If you trespass --’ is a brief summary of what is stated in, for example, Leviticus 26:14; Deuteronomy 4:25; Deuteronomy 28:15; Deuteronomy 28:58, and is mentioned in respect of deserving captivity in Leviticus 26:40.

From the point of view of �ehemiah’s prayer the important point was that YHWH had now done this thing and had brought His people to the place in which He had caused His �ame to dwell there. God had gloriously delivered them and he was therefore puzzled why God, having done so, had left His people in such deep anguish and distress. It did not seem consistent with the promise.

PULPIT, "If ye transgress, etc. This is not a quotation, but a reference to the general sense of various passages, as, for instance, Le 26:27-45; Deuteronomy 30:1-

5, etc. The sacred historians habitually refer to the older Scriptures in this way, quoting them in the spirit rather than in the letter.

9 but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my �ame.’

GILL, "But if ye return unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them,.... Return by repentance, and, as a proof of the genuineness of it, yield obedience to the commands of God, and continue therein:

though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven; that is, the uttermost parts of the earth, the most distant regions; so called, because at the extreme parts of the horizon, according to our apprehension, the heavens and earth touch each other; so that what is the uttermost part of the one is supposed to be of the other:

yet will I gather them from thence and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there; that is to Jerusalem where the temple was built, and his name was called upon.

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:9 But [if] ye turn unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them; though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven, [yet] will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there.

Ver. 9. But if ye turn unto me] By sin men do wickedly depart from God; as by repentance they return unto him, and close with him.

And keep my commandments] Evangelically keep them; for with a legal obedience none can: our short legs and pursy hearts cannot hold out here.

And do them] Or at least, be doing at them, do them as we can; si praecepta faciamus, etiamsi non perficiamus, sufficit.

Unto the uttermost part of the heaven] That is, of the earth, which seems to our eye terminated with the heaven, and covered as with a half globe. Jews are a dejected people to this present; and a fearful instance of God’s heavy indignation against sin. Josephus saith, that in his time they were grown so wicked, that if the Romans had not destroyed and dispersed them, without doubt either the earth would have swallowed them up, or fire from heaven have consumed them.

Yet will I gather them from thence] Else not. God’s promises are with a condition, which is as an oar in a boat, and stern of a ship; and turns the promise another way.

BE�SO�, "�ehemiah 1:9. But if ye turn unto me, I will gather them from thence, &c. — This promise made by Moses he trusted God would fulfil, as he had the threatening. It is to be observed, that �ehemiah was directed in this prayer to God, and in his efforts for the restoration of Jerusalem, by the predictions of Moses, Deuteronomy 30:1-4. And he plainly found the truth of that prophecy in the readiness of the king of Persia to grant his petition, which, no doubt, confirmed his faith in what Moses there declares.

10 “They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand.

GILL, "Now these are thy servants, and thy people,.... Meaning those that were in Jerusalem and Judah, gathered out of several countries, and returned to Jerusalem:

whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power, and by thy strong hand; touching and moving the heart of Cyrus to proclaim liberty to them.

HE�RY, " He pleads the great things God had formerly done for them (Neh_1:10):

“Whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power, in the days of old. Thy power is still the same; wilt thou not therefore still redeem them and perfect their redemption? Let not those be overpowered by the enemy that have a God of infinite power on their side.”

Lastly, He concludes with a particular petition, that God would prosper him in his undertaking, and give him favour with the king: this man he calls him, for the greatest of men are but men before God; they must know themselves to be so (Psa_9:20), and others must know them to be so. Who art thou that thou shouldst be afraid of a man? Mercy in the sight of this man is what he prays for, meaning not the king's mercy, but mercy from God in his address to the king. Favour with men is then comfortable when we can see it springing from the mercy of God.

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:10 �ow these [are] thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power, and by thy strong hand.

Ver. 10. �ow these are thy servants and thy people] And therefore thou art concerned, in point of honour, to see to them, and to work for them, as every master will do for his servants, and king for his subjects. Otherwise, the neighbouring nations our enemies may possibly say as Aigoland, king of Saragossa, in Aragon, did; of whom it is reported, that he long time made Charlemagne believe that he would be baptized. And when he came for that purpose to the French court, and saw many diseased and poor people expecting alms from the emperor’s table, he asking what they were? was answered, that they were the servants and people of God. On these words he speedily returned, desperately protesting that he would not serve that God which could keep his servants no better.

Whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power] And wilt thou part with thy purchase, or obscure the glory of thy conquest over the gods and people of Egypt, by leaving this thy people destitute?

BE�SO�, "�ehemiah 1:10. Whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power, &c. —In days of old, and thy power is still the same; wilt thou not therefore still redeem them, and perfect their redemption? Let not them be overpowered by the enemy that have a God of infinite power on their side.

PETT, "�ehemiah 1:10

A Description Of The People For Whom He Is Praying (�ehemiah 1:10).

He now points out that they are not just any people. They are the people whom YHWH had in the past redeemed by His great power and His mighty hand from among the Egyptians (Exodus 32:11). Surely, he was saying, You did not show your compassion towards them for nothing?

�ehemiah 1:10

“�ow these are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power, and by your strong hand.”Here then were the people whom God had delivered in accordance with His promises, His servants whom He had redeemed by His great power and His strong hand (Exodus 32:11). �ow he was about to ask that YHWH would intervene on their behalf. We note that there is no criticism of YHWH, no question as to why He had done what He had, only a plea that, having already done what He had, He would now act further on behalf of His people through �ehemiah. His confession of sin was a recognition that God’s people were still receiving their due punishment for sin. Redemption by great power and a strong hand echoes the Exodus deliverance (Exodus 32:11; Exodus 6:1; Exodus 13:9). The return from Exile could be seen as another Exodus, and that deliverance also had been followed by times of anguish and misery as the Book of Judges makes clear.

PULPIT, "Thy people whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power. It would be better to translate, "Whom thou didst redeem." The reference is especially to the deliverance from Egypt, which is so constantly spoken of as effected "with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm" (Deuteronomy 9:29; Deuteronomy 26:8, etc. ).

11 Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.”

I was cupbearer to the king.

BAR�ES, "A Persian king had numerous cup-bearers, each of whom probably discharged the office in his turn.

CLARKE, "Mercy in the sight of this man - Favour before the king, Ahasuerus. He seems then to have been giving him the cup.

For I was the king’s cup-bearer - The king’s butler, (the Persians call him saky),

which gave him the opportunity of being frequently with the king; and to be in such a place of trust, he must be in the king’s confidence. No Eastern potentate would have a cup-bearer with whom he could not trust his life, poison being frequently administered in this way. This verse seems to have been a mental prayer, which Nehemiah now put up as he was delivering the cup into the king’s hand.

GILL, "O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant,.... To the prayer of Nehemiah, put up at this time:

and to the prayer of thy servants, who desire to fear thy name; the prayer of the Jews in Judea, whose desire was to worship the Lord in his temple, according to his will:

and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day; meaning himself, who was to wait on the king of Persia that day, and, if he had opportunity, intended to lay the case of the Jews before him, and therefore entreats he might meet with success:

and grant him mercy in the sight of this man; King Artaxerxes, who was but a man, and whose heart was in the hands of God, and he could easily move him to pity and compassion towards his poor people the Jews:

for I was the king's cupbearer; in the execution of which office he was often in the king's presence, and hoped to have an opportunity of speaking to him in the behalf of the Jews; this with the Persians was reckoned a very honourable office (g). A son of Prexaspes, a very honourable man, was made cupbearer to Cambyses; and so it was with the Greeks and Romans (h); and the poets not only make Ganymedes to be Jupiter's cupbearer (i), but even Vulcan himself is put into this office (k).

HE�RY, "He pleads the relation wherein of old they stood to God: “These are thy servants and thy people (Neh_1:10), whom thou hast set apart for thyself, and taken into covenant with thee. Wilt thou suffer thy sworn enemies to trample upon and oppress thy sworn servants? If thou wilt not appear for thy people, whom wilt thou appear for?” See Isa_63:19. As an evidence of their being God's servants he gives them this character (Neh_1:11): “They desire to fear thy name; they are not only called by thy name, but really have a reverence for thy name; they now worship thee, and thee only, according to thy will, and have an awe of all the discoveries thou art pleased to make of thyself; this they have a desire to do,” which denotes, (1.) Their good will to it. “It is their constant care and endeavour to be found in the way of their duty, and they aim at it, though in many instances they come short.” (2.) Their complacency in it. “They take pleasure to fear thy name (so it may be read), not only do their duty, but do it with delight.” Those shall graciously be accepted of God that truly desire to fear his name; for such a desire is his own work.

JAMISO�, "I was the king’s cupbearer — This officer, in the ancient Oriental courts, was always a person of rank and importance; and, from the confidential nature of his duties and his frequent access to the royal presence, he possessed great influence.

K&D, "Neh_1:11The prayer closes with the reiterated entreaty that God would hearken to the prayer of

His servant (i.e., Nehemiah), and to the prayer of His servants who delight to fear His

name (יר�ה, infin. like Deu_4:10 and elsewhere), i.e., of all Israelites who, like

Nehemiah, prayed to God to redeem Israel from all his troubles. For himself in

particular, Nehemiah also request: “Prosper Thy servant to-day (ה�ום like Neh_1:6; (לעב*ךmay be either the accusative of the person, like 2Ch_26:5, or the dative: Prosper his design unto Thy servant, like Neh_2:20), and give him to mercy (i.e., cause him to find mercy; comp. 1Ki_8:50; Psa_106:46) before the face of this man.” What man he means is explained by the following supplementary remark, “And I was cup-bearer to the king,” without whose favour and permission Nehemiah could not have carried his project into execution (as related in Neh 2).

TRAPP, "�ehemiah 1:11 O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants, who desire to fear thy name: and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. For I was the king’s cupbearer.

Ver. 11. O Lord, I beseech thee] He ends as he began, see �ehemiah 1:5, praying in the Holy Ghost, whose creature prayer is.

And to the prayer of thy servants] Whose necessities prick them on to prayer in all places; and who pray for the peace of Jerusalem incessantly, Psalms 137:1-9.

Who desire to fear thy name] The whole life of a true Christian is nothing else but sanctum desiderium, saith Austin, a holy desire. "Willing to live honestly," Hebrews 13:18, wishing well to an exact keeping of God’s commandments, Psalms 119:4-5, affecting that perfection which yet we cannot effect.

Prosper, I pray thee] Prosperity given in as an answer to prayer is very sweet; as the cipher, when it followeth the figure, adds to the number, though it be nothing in itself.

For I was the king’s cupbearer] And so might take mollissima fandi tempora, my fittest opportunity to help my people.

BE�SO�, "�ehemiah 1:11. Who desire to fear thy name — Who are not only called by thy name, but really have a reverence for it: who now worship thee, and thee only, according to thy will, and have an awful sense of all the discoveries which thou art pleased to make of thyself. Those who truly desire to fear his name shall be

graciously accepted of God. Grant him mercy in the sight of this man — The king, upon whom he was going to attend: who, though a god by office, was but a man by nature, and therefore his heart was wholly at God’s disposal. Favour with men is then comfortable, when we see it springing from the mercy of God. For I was the king’s cup-bearer — Whereby I had opportunity to speak to him, and some favour with him, which encouraged me to make this prayer, and to hope for some success. Many of the Jews, by the singular favour of God, obtained considerable dignities in their captivity, as Daniel and his companions, Zerubbabel and others; among whom was this pious man, who was advanced to this office of cup-bearer when he was but a youth; which, it must be observed, was a place of great honour and advantage in the Persian court, because of the privilege which it gave him who bore it, of being daily in the king’s presence, and the opportunity which he had thereby of gaining his favour for the procuring of any petition he should make to him. That it was a place of great temporal advantage, seems evident by �ehemiah’s gaining those immense riches which enabled him, for so many years, (�ehemiah 5:14; �ehemiah 5:19,) out of his own privy purse only, to live in his government with great splendour and expense, without burdening the people at all. See Prideaux, Anno 445.

WHEDO�, "11. Mercy in the sight of this man — Favour before king Artaxerxes. Upon hearing of the great affliction and reproach of the Jews at Jerusalem, �ehemiah seems to have conceived the design of obtaining authority from the king to rebuild Jerusalem. This he made a matter of prayer night and day for about four months, (see note on �ehemiah 2:1,) and in these verses we doubtless have the substance of the prayer he offered continually until he obtained his desire.

This man — “The mighty monarch of the Persian empire would be addressed by his flatterers as if he were more than man; yet �ehemiah knew that in the sight of God he was upon a level with his meanest subjects.” — Scott.

The king’s cupbearer — An officer of high rank in the ancient oriental courts, whose business was to take charge of the royal wines, and pour them out and bear them in drinking vessels to the king. In Genesis 40:1, the original word is rendered butler. Rabshakeh is supposed to have held this office in the Assyrian court. See note on 2 Kings 18:17.

COKE, "�ehemiah 1:11. And grant him mercy—For I, &c.— Houbigant supposes, that �ehemiah repeated this prayer (which he had often before repeated) now again in silence, while he administered the cup to the king in his office; and therefore he renders the last clause, but I then administered the cup to the king; and this alone, he thinks, can account for the mode of expression, this man. The office of cup-bearer was a place of great honour and advantage in the Persian court, because of the privilege which it gave him who bare it, of being daily in the king's presence; and the opportunity which he thereby had of gaining his favour for the procuring of any petition that he should make to him. That it was a place of great pecuniary advantage, seems evident by �ehemiah's gaining those immense riches which enabled him for so many years, (ch. �ehemiah 5:14; �ehemiah 5:19.) out of his own

privy purse only, to live in his government with great splendour and expence, without burdening the people at all.

REFLECTIO�S.—�ehemiah's prayer speaks the gracious temper of his soul.

1. He draws near to God with reverence and godly fear, yet mixed with filial confidence, as to the great God, terrible in judgments, yet faithful to his promises, and never failing those who trust him. �ote; (1.) There is a reverential fear of God, which is perfectly consistent with the most enlarged love towards him. (2.) They, who experience the love of God in their souls, may comfortably conclude that he is their faithful friend.

2. He humbly prays that God would graciously hear the prayer which zeal for his glory dictated, and grant the desires of his heart which his grace excited. �ote; When God pours out upon us the spirit of grace and supplication, we may assuredly conclude that he will hear and answer us.

3. He penitently confesses their sins, which justly had brought down these afflictions upon them; taking shame to himself, among the rest, for having added to the provocation.

4. He pleads for mercy and pardon; urging, as the ground of his hope, the divine promise that God had given by Moses, that whenever they returned to him, wherever dispersed, or however distressed, he would return to them: and such was now their earnest desire and prayer. �ote; (1.) As we see the fulfilment of God's threatenings, we may conclude the fulfilment of his promises. (2.) The most reviving pleas in prayer are drawn from God's faithful word, wherein he has caused us to put our trust. (3.) Though we are not worthy to be called God's people; yet, when we return with penitential prayer, he will not disclaim the relation. (4.) The greater kings are but dying men, and worms of earth; and their hearts are in God's hand, to turn them according to the good pleasure of his own will.

PETT, "�ehemiah 1:11 a

A Request That God Be Responsive To Both His And Their Prayers, The Prayers Of Those Who Fear Him (�ehemiah 1:11 a).

He makes clear that he is not praying for an unresponsive people. he is praying for those who fear YHWH’s �ame.

�ehemiah 1:11

“O Lord, I beseech you, let now your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants, who delight to fear your name,”�ehemiah recognises that much God-fearing prayer is going up from the returned exiles, to which he now adds his own prayers. And he calls on God to be attentive to their combined prayers. �ote his continual emphasis on the fact that he and they are

God’s servants. Moses is God’s servant, he is God’s servant, the returnees are God’s servants (�ehemiah 1:6-8; �ehemiah 1:10-11). And the reason that he is confident that God will hear is because they ‘delight to fear His �ame’. To ‘fear His �ame’ means not only that they worship Him with due reverence and awe, but also that they ‘fear God and keep His commandments’ (Ecclesiastes 12:13). We are reminded in this regard of the words of the Psalmist, ‘if I regard iniquity in my heart, YHWH will not hear me’ (Psalms 66:18). We should note that this fear is not a craven fear. It is something which is a delight to them. They enjoy being God’s servants.

Verse 11An Appeal That God Will Help Him As He Takes The Dangerous Path Of Approaching The King On Their Behalf (�ehemiah 1:11 b).

We do not know at what stage �ehemiah’s concern for his people turned to a recognition that he was in a position to do something about it. But this is what often happens when we pray. God suddenly says, ‘well, why don’t you do something about it?’ However, such a suggestion would have filled �ehemiah’s heart with apprehension. It may seem to us a simple task to lay a petition before the king, but it was far from being so. The appeal could not be made directly. The petitioner had in some way to draw the king’s attention to the fact that he had an appeal to make, and then hope that the king was feeling benevolent. If the king was in a bad mood it could result in the petitioner’s death. The means of drawing the king’s attention was usually by putting on a sad countenance. But it was a dangerous procedure. All courtiers were called on to express happiness in the king’s presence, so that anyone who was not expressing happiness was clearly doing it for a purpose. It was because he wanted the king’s ear. On the other hand not to be happy in the king’s presence without good reason could be seen as derogatory to the king’s majesty and could well result in death. The man could be dragged out and summarily executed. Thus �ehemiah sought God’s help in the difficult and dangerous task he would undertake.

�ehemiah 1:11

“And prosper, I pray you, your servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”The day had come when he knew that he must risk all and place his petition before the king. And so he called on God to prosper him on that day, and grant him mercy in the sight of ‘this man’. As God’s servant he was casting his future upon God. We can compare the similar situation with Esther in Esther 4:11; Esther 4:6. ‘This man’ may well have been an intentional attempt by �ehemiah to remind himself that, however great the king might be, he was in the end only a man, or indeed as an attempt to remind God that Artaxerxes was only a man who was at His disposal. On the other hand it might have been an expression of awe. But such an expression would not have been seen as insulting. The kings of Persia did not give themselves semi-divine status.

�ehemiah 1:11

‘�ow I was cupbearer to the king.’�ehemiah now indicates his own exalted status, and why it was that he had access to the king, and not only access, but access as the king’s confidante. It was because he was the king’s cupbearer. It was he who would have responsibility for the selection of which wines would be presented before the King, and would himself drink from the king’s cup prior to the king partaking, by pouring some into his hand and drinking it. This was as a guard against poisoning. His delicate palate would immediately discern any foreign element. He would also be expected to provide convivial conversation for the king, and tactfully hear whatever the king had to say. He could thus exert considerable influence over the king. The office would often be combined with other important offices. Thus in Tobit 1:22 we read of Achiacharus (Ahikar) that he was cupbearer and keeper of the signet, and steward and overseer of the accounts and was next to the king in importance.

It is not necessary to assume that �ehemiah was a eunuch. Many cupbearers were, but many were not, and many who had access to the queen and the royal harem were also not eunuchs. Indeed we have texts which lay out the behaviour expected of them in the royal harem. The fact that his being a eunuch is never mentioned against him by his opponents among the Jews would serve to confirm that he was not so. Otherwise it could have been used in order to diminish his religious status in the eyes of many Jews.

It will be noted that this verse is transitional, and acts as a convenient introduction to what follows, thereby linking his prayer with its fulfilment.

LA�GE, "�ehemiah 1:11. Who desire to fear thy name.—The name of God is His expression in His word or work. The declaration of a desire to fear God is a modest assertion of a true fear of God, but with a consciousness of its imperfection. This man=King Artaxerxes.—�earness to God enables �ehemiah to think of the “great king” as only a man. The “this” does not indicate that he was in the king’s presence when he prayed, but that he was brought into close relations with the king. For I was the king’s cup-bearer.—The position of cup-bearer to the king was an exalted one (comp. Genesis 40:21). Rab-shakeh (the name given to one of Sennacherib’s envoys to Hezekiah, 2 Kings 18:17) means “chief cup-bearer.” The monuments of Egypt, Assyria, and Persia show the high rank of the cupbearer. �ehemiah’s high position as cup-bearer is an additional argument for his relationship to the royal family of Judah, for the Oriental despots loved to have men of royal blood to wait upon them. (See Daniel 1:3.) This phrase, “for I was the king’s cup-bearer,” is added as explanatory of the allusion to the king.

PULPIT, "Prosper thy servant this day. "This day" does not perhaps mean more than "at this time"—in connection with this matter which is now in my thoughts. And grant him mercy in the sight of this man. "This man" is, of course, Artaxerxes, though as yet he has not been named. �ehemiah's thoughts have far outstripped his words. He has made up his mind that, in order to remove the reproach of Jerusalem, he must go there in person; that, to do so, he must obtain the king's

permission; and that, to get his permission, he needs to be in very special favour with him. All depending on one man only, he has one man only in his mind, who becomes to him, therefore, "this man." I was the king's cupbearer. Literally, "I was cupbearer to the king." �ot his sole cupbearer, but one of many. He mentions the fact here, partly to explain the meaning of "this man" to the reader, partly because it was his office which would give him access to Artaxerxes, and enable him to profit by the royal "mercy" or favour.