Nehemiah

Overview

Nehemiah is the king’s cupbearer in Susa when news comes that Jerusalem’s wall is still broken down. He weeps, fasts, prays for months, and then asks the most powerful man alive for leave to go and rebuild it.

The wall goes up in fifty-two days against constant opposition — mockery, threats, infiltration and a plot to lure him into a meeting. Then the harder work begins: Ezra reads the law aloud, the people covenant together, and Nehemiah returns years later to find some of it undone.

Background

Artaxerxes I ruled Persia, and an earlier attempt at the wall had been stopped by his own order after complaints from the neighbors. Nehemiah needed the king to reverse himself, which is why he prayed before speaking.

Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem held influence in the surrounding provinces. A walled Jerusalem threatened their standing, which is why their opposition never let up.

Key themes

• Prayer and planning belong together; Nehemiah does both without apology.
• The people had a mind to work — the whole community builds, family by family.
• Opposition comes as mockery, then threat, then subtle invitation.
• The word of God read and explained brings weeping, then joy.
• Reform must be maintained, or it slips back within a decade.

Outline

1. News, prayer, and a requestChapters 1–2

   Four months of prayer, then a night ride around the ruins.

2. Building under threatChapters 3–4

   Every family at its section, a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.

3. Trouble insideChapter 5

   Debt and mortgaged children — and a governor who refuses his own allowance.

4. The wall finishedChapter 6

   Plots, a hired prophet, and fifty-two days from start to finish.

5. The word and the covenantChapters 7–10

   Ezra reads from morning to midday, the people weep, then feast, then sign.

6. Settling and slippingChapters 11–13

   Jerusalem repopulated, the walls dedicated — and old compromises returning.

Key passages

• Nehemiah 1:4 When I heard these words, I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days.
• Nehemiah 2:18 Let us rise up and build — so they strengthened their hands.
• Nehemiah 4:6 The people had a mind to work.
• Nehemiah 4:17-18 With one hand they worked, and with the other they held a weapon.
• Nehemiah 6:3 I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.
• Nehemiah 8:8 They read in the book distinctly, and gave the sense.
• Nehemiah 8:10 The joy of the LORD is your strength.
• Nehemiah 9:6 Thou, even thou, art LORD alone.

Christ in Nehemiah

Nehemiah leaves a palace to rebuild a ruined city and share its danger, which is a small picture of a greater leaving. The book also ends unfinished — the reforms fray, the people drift — and that unfinished feeling is exactly what four hundred years of silence, and then a manger, answer.

Reading it

• Read chapter 1, then note every short prayer Nehemiah slips in while working.
• Chapter 3 is a list of names; read it as a picture of shared work.
• Read chapter 13 honestly — it is a warning about how quickly gains are lost.