Ezra & Nehemiah

Derek W. H. Thomas

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781629950037
• eBook ISBN: 9781629950044
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

An expository commentary that traces the gripping story of a community revived and restored by God's grace through gifted individuals—preparing the way for the coming Messiah.

Nehemiah

THE MAN OF PRAYER

19

MEET NEHEMIAH

Nehemiah 1:1–11a

Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, “If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.” They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. (Neh. 1:8–10)

“Nehemiah comes to us as a man at the top of his profession, but we know nothing of his background or of the stages of his rise to position and influence,” writes Alec Motyer.¹ We can make a reasonable assumption that Nehemiah grew up in Babylon among the exiles and that for some reason—possibly because he was too young—he did not return with Ezra. Between the closing verses of Ezra and the first verse of Nehemiah, we have jumped ahead from the winter of 458 B.C. to the spring of 445 B.C. (cf. Neh. 1:1; 2:1),² the twentieth year of the reign of King Artaxerxes of Persia (465–424 B.C.).

Time has moved on, but the book of Nehemiah is the continuation of the same story that has occupied us in its canonical predecessor, the book of Ezra, under the same Persian monarch, Artaxerxes. As with a documentary movie, we are to imagine “a dozen years later” appearing briefly on a sidebar as we turn the page from Ezra 10 to Nehemiah 1.

The connections between the story lines in Ezra and Nehemiah are more obvious in the texts that were accessible to those in the time of Jesus and the apostles. From earliest times, in the Hebrew tradition, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, though written quite separately, were considered as one book. Josephus (c. A.D. 37–100) and the Jewish Talmud refer to the book of Ezra but not to a separate book of Nehemiah. And the version of the Bible widely read in the days of Jesus and the apostles, the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, also treats Ezra and Nehemiah as one book.

Nehemiah first appears in Susa, the capital (or “citadel”), about 225 miles east of Babylon, built on three hills overlooking the Shaur River. Susa was the winter resort of the Persian kings, located today on the western edge of Iran about 150 miles east of the Tigris River. Greater Susa stood on a mound about two and a quarter miles in circumference, covering nearly 250 acres. The ten-acre citadel is located on an elevated area on the northern point of the site. Susa itself was an ancient city of the Elamite, Persian, and Parthian empires of Iran, and one of the oldest known settlements of the world. It is mentioned once in the book of Daniel and nineteen times in the book of Esther. The city had been taken during the reign of Cyrus at the time of the first wave of returning exiles in 538 B.C. The palace was built by Darius approximately fifty years before the period in question here in Nehemiah chapter 1.³ Modern excavations of the site have shown an audience hall, where the Persians held court. It was a square building over 350 feet long on each side, featuring seventy-two stone columns, each estimated at sixty-five to eighty feet tall.

Nehemiah himself is introduced to us as a “cupbearer” to King Artaxerxes (Neh. 1:11), an extremely important post. In some instances in Assyrian and Persian courts, the cupbearer had access to the king’s harem and was therefore a eunuch. We are not told whether Nehemiah himself was a eunuch.⁴ Chiefly, the cupbearer, as the word implies, ensured that the king’s “cup” was free from poison. One of the things that ancient rulers feared most was to have their food and drink poisoned. An attempt was made, for example, by an assassin named Bogoas to poison the last of the Persian kings, Darius III, before the Persian empire fell to the onslaught of Alexander the Great. The attempt failed when Darius got wind of it and made the assassin drink the poison himself. We have already seen in our studies of Ezra that the Persian hegemony was not without its dissidents. A revolt had broken out in Egypt just before the time of Ezra’s return to Jerusalem, and another incident had taken place under Megabyzus, a satrap north of Mesopotamia, two or three years before the period described in the first chapter of Nehemiah.

The Persians had a long history in winemaking, and the office of cupbearer bore special significance. It was the cupbearer’s duty to taste the wine in the presence of the king. Homer’s Iliad contains a notable account of a cupbearer named Hêbê: “The gods were seated near to Zeus in council, upon a golden floor. Graciously Hêbê served them nectar, as with cups of gold they toasted one another, looking down toward the stronghold of Ilion.”⁵ The office of cupbearer, therefore, was a particularly honorable one, usually given to young men or boys of unquestionable loyalty and trustworthiness. The fact that the Persians in the fifth century B.C. were able to place their complete trust in a Jewish cupbearer is itself noteworthy.

First of all, it says something about the nature of Jewish response to the exile. With few exceptions—such as Judas Maccabeus’s revolt in the second century B.C.—they were acquiescent and law-abiding. The Jews did not respond to the exile by forming militia groups bent on making life as difficult as possible for their Persian masters. In a similar manner to the way the early church submitted to Roman rule, the Jews of the period of the Persian empire were subject to the governing authorities (cf. Rom. 13:1).

Second, it says something to us about the personal character and integrity of Nehemiah. This is important to note at the beginning of our study of Nehemiah, since later on we will have to explain why (according to some translations) Nehemiah is so angry with some of his fellow Jews that he pulls out their hair in an act of seemingly extraordinary violence (Neh. 13:25). Whatever we make of that incident—we will wait until the final chapter to examine it—here at least Nehemiah appears as one of the most admirable men imaginable. Thus, there is a glimpse of Christlikeness in Nehemiah’s demeanor; godliness is demonstrated in flesh and blood in a Persian court.

PRAYER

Most of this first chapter is taken up with Nehemiah’s prayer: a seemingly reflexive response to dire news from Jerusalem. The burden he unmasks takes on a sustained and deliberate pattern as days turn into weeks and weeks into months. The structure of the prayer provides an appropriate model of prayer at any time and in any circumstance; as such, it is worthy of close attention.

Into this setting, with Nehemiah going about his responsibilities as cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, enters a group of men from Judah, among whom is a man called Hanani. He is referred to here by Nehemiah as “one of my brothers” (Neh. 1:2) and later as “my brother” (7:2). Though it is possible that Hanani was merely a fellow Jew, commentators are open to the idea that he may well have been a biological brother—perhaps an older brother who had made the return to Jerusalem at an earlier period. Nehemiah questions the group from Judah, showing his deep concern for his kinsmen in Jerusalem, and more importantly for the cause of the kingdom of God.

Nehemiah had grown up in Babylon and had never been in Jerusalem, but his heart was burdened for the Lord’s work. He reveals the spirit of the psalmist in exile:

By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.

For there our captors
required of us songs,

and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How shall we sing the LORD’s song
in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!

Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,

if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy! (Ps. 137:1–6)

“If I forget you, O Jerusalem . . .” This had been Nehemiah’s stance.

Children of the kingdom—Christians—ought to reflect the burden of Nehemiah’s heart. Nothing is more important than the state of the kingdom of God. Our concern should be similar to that of William Carey, the so-called father of modern missions. Reading the stories of Captain Cook’s travels had opened Carey’s mind to the existence of other lands and peoples where the gospel had not yet been heard. The lives of David Brainerd and John Eliot, missionaries to the Native Americans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, gave him practical examples of cross-cultural communication. As a young man, working partly as a cobbler and partly as a teacher, Carey placed on the wall over his workbench a large map of the world that he had drawn with the names of countries and their populations and began praying for the peoples of the world. He prayed that God would make it possible for him to do something about the fate of those who lived in spiritual darkness.

All believers should demonstrate concern for the welfare of God’s people and the cause of the kingdom of God beyond their own neighborhoods. Every Christian should have a spirit of missionary inquiry. And it begins by asking: What is the nature of church life in this or that city? Is there a Bible-based church there? Is it saturated with the gospel? Is Jesus loved and worshiped in their midst? Is there a commitment to the doctrines of grace? Are the people of God discouraged?

What does Nehemiah hear? Bad news! The returned exiles are “in great trouble and shame” (Neh. 1:3). Furthermore, “the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” Since Nehemiah seems surprised by the news about the walls of the city, it can hardly be a reference to the destruction of the walls that had taken place at the time of Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. In Ezra 4 we noted that the chapter, in referring to a letter by King Ahasuerus, jumped forward to cite a similar letter written by Artaxerxes just before the period here in Nehemiah 1. City-wall construction had evidently begun, but “when the copy of King Artaxerxes’ letter was read before Rehum and Shimshai the scribe and their associates, they went in haste to the Jews at Jerusalem and by force and power made them cease” (Ezra 4:23).

Eighteen years after the initial return under Cyrus in 538 B.C., temple reconstruction was complete. The work had not been without its difficulties. But for some eighty years, the walls of the city remained in the ruined condition in which Nebuchadnezzar had left them. Sometime between the close of Ezra and the opening of Nehemiah, however, work on the rebuilding of the city’s walls had evidently begun and then summarily stopped! Understandably, perhaps. In the eyes of the Persians, rebuilding the temple was one thing; rebuilding the defensive walls of the city was quite another. Against whom were the citizens of Jerusalem defending themselves? Against Persia? In that case, it needed to be stopped.

These, then, are the circumstances in which we meet Nehemiah for the first time. He has just heard news from (possibly) his own brother that things were not going so well in Jerusalem. He was in a difficult position. His trustworthiness was unquestionable, but were he suddenly to begin advocating for the city of Jerusalem against the king’s express orders to halt the rebuilding efforts, his position could well be deemed to be threatening and his life brought to a swift end! Nehemiah found himself in a very tight spot indeed.

THE RESPONSE OF PRAYER

In response to this bad news, Nehemiah does several things, the first of which is to pray: “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven” (Neh. 1:4).

Initially upon hearing of the situation in Jerusalem, he “sat down,” an expression meant at first to be taken literally. But Nehemiah’s duties as cupbearer would have to continue. He was not in any position to negotiate a leave of absence—he was, after all, a slave of the Persian king. His work would have to continue. Did Nehemiah envisage from the start a situation in which he would request the king’s permission to leave his post and go to Jerusalem himself? Or did such a thought occur to him only after he had pondered and prayed for a while? We do not know, though the latter seems more likely.

Sometimes we are guilty of praying when action is what we need. Prayer in such instances becomes an excuse for action. Nehemiah, after all, is revealed in Scripture as a man of action sine qua non: vigorous, gifted, organizationally meticulous, administratively efficient, and a leader of men. But for now at least, all he can do is pray. That is the wa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Introduction
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Ezra: The Man of God’s Word
• Nehemiah: The Man of Prayer
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Scripture
• Index of Subjects and Names