I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Nehemiah 4-6.
Understanding that the walls of Jerusalem had been rebuilt once already since the return from exile puts the reaction of Nehemiah’s enemies in context. One begins to understand that they were taking advantage of the disrepair of Jerusalem for their own purposes. They wanted Jerusalem to be in a state of disrepair in order to facilitate their own illegal activities. Initially they tried to discourage the Jews from repairing the walls by deriding their work as inadequate. When that failed, they planned to send “bandits” to attack the city, destroying the work which had been done. However, Nehemiah received word of their plans and implemented a defensive strategy. The passage does not make it clear why Nehemiah’s enemies did not follow through anyway, but I suspect that a successful attack on Nehemiah’s defenses would have revealed that the attackers were not just bandits…or perhaps, their forces WERE just bandits and thus not up to taking on a well prepared force of defenders. With the failure of this strategy they attempted to lure Nehemiah to where they could ambush him by threatening to lie to the King of Persia about his intentions. This failed. Part of the reason this failed was because Nehemiah had clearly laid out his plans to the King of Persia before he left to come to Jerusalem.
In the middle of the above, Nehemiah discovered that the poor among the Jews were being exploited by the wealthy and thus being driven even further into poverty. When he realized this was true, he called the elites from among the Jews together and demanded that they stop. But, he did not exempt himself from liability. Rather, he recognized how his own actions contributed to the exploitation of the poor, even though that was not his intention. Overall the portion of the passage where Nehemiah worked with the elites among the Jews to stop the exploitation of their poorer neighbors also provides us with an example for all leaders. The passage points out how Nehemiah did not take advantage of many of the perks of his position which would have allowed him to become more wealthy in ways someone else would not be able to do. Those perks were intended to allow a man of less wealth than Nehemiah had to fulfill the duties of his office. However, reading between the lines one realizes that most people in a position similar to Nehemiah’s used those perks to make themselves even more wealthy and powerful.
