Nehemiah Rebuilds the Walls

Moonlight on broken stones. A man rides slowly around a ruined city wall, with only a few companions. He tells no one what he is doing. Every few yards he stops, looks at the rubble, and makes a plan.

Some years after the first exiles returned and rebuilt the temple, a Jewish man named Nehemiah was working in the Persian palace at Susa. His job was cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. He served the king his wine, and that meant the king trusted him with his life. One day his brother Hanani arrived from Judah with news. The people back home were in great trouble. The wall of Jerusalem was broken down, and its gates had been burned. When Nehemiah heard this, he sat down and wept.

For days Nehemiah mourned, fasted and prayed. He confessed the sins of his people, his own included, and he reminded God of his promise to gather them back. Months later, as he served the king wine, the king noticed. Why do you look so sad? You're not ill. This must be sadness of heart. Nehemiah was terrified. Servants were not supposed to look gloomy in front of the king. But he answered honestly. How can I not be sad, when the city of my fathers lies in ruins? What do you want? asked the king. And then, the Bible says, Nehemiah prayed to the God of heaven, right there, in a heartbeat. Then he asked. Send me to rebuild it.

The king said yes. He gave Nehemiah letters for the governors on the way, and a letter to the keeper of the royal forest for timber. When Nehemiah reached Jerusalem, he waited three days. Then he rode out at night to inspect the walls. In one place the rubble was so bad his animal could not get through. Afterwards he gathered the leaders. You see the trouble we are in. Come, let us rebuild the wall. He told them how God's hand had been on him, and what the king had said. And they answered, let us rise up and build.

Not everyone was pleased. Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem, powerful men in the region, laughed at them. What are these feeble Jews doing? Tobiah joked that if a fox climbed up on their wall, it would knock it down. Nehemiah prayed, and the people kept building, family by family, each group working on a section, many near their own homes. Soon the wall reached half its height, for the people had a mind to work. Then their enemies plotted to attack. So Nehemiah set guards. Half the men worked while half stood ready with spears. The builders worked with swords at their sides. A trumpeter stayed by Nehemiah. If you hear the trumpet, he said, run to that place. Our God will fight for us.

There was trouble inside too. Some wealthy Jews were charging their poorer neighbours interest and taking their fields. Nehemiah was angry, and he made them stop and give back what they had taken. Then his enemies tried tricks. Come and meet us on the plain of Ono, they said, four times over. Nehemiah answered every time. I am doing a great work, and I cannot come down. They spread rumours. They tried to scare him into hiding in the temple. He refused. And on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, the wall was finished. Fifty-two days. Even the enemies saw it, the Bible says, and knew this work had been done by God.

Nehemiah's opponent Sanballat was a real, powerful official. A letter on papyrus, written around 407 before Christ by the Jewish community at Elephantine, an island on the Nile in southern Egypt, mentions the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria. So outside the Bible, too, we meet the family of the man who mocked the builders of Jerusalem.

Nehemiah Rebuilds the Walls. You'll find it in the book of Nehemiah, chapters 1 to 6. Nehemiah wept, then prayed, then planned, then worked, and he kept praying the whole way through. When people laughed and threatened, he didn't come down from the wall. So here's the question to carry with you. What good work has God given you, that you need to keep at and not come down from?