04 - Nehemiah's Work

IV. NEHEMIAH’S WORK SINGLEHEART, BUILDER.

Then this wise man strengthened zeal with method. Under his advice each powerful man took his own piece of the dilapidated wall, and repaired it with his people. This may seem a small thing to hasty readers, but it was a master-stroke of genius. Not only was it a grand division of labour, but it animated the work with a noble emulation and a personal pride. See how fast my work goes on V ’ See how well my piece is doneT ’Now, my sons, gird up your tunics, or Rephaiah the son of Hur will get ahead of us.’

There were forty-six building parties, and leading women amongst them, the daughters of Shallum, a powerful man. I apprehend the individual builders were not less than three thousand; so the walls began to rise like an exhalation. The good cannot monopolize foresight. Evil men soon see when their interests are threatened. The heathen leaders showed their teeth at once; but at first they underrated the power of zeal under a wise and earnest leader. Their weapon was scorn. Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem inquired ironically whether Nehemiah meant to take the place of Artaxerxes. Nehemiah replied, I am God’s servant, and mind your own business; you have no portion, nor right, nor memorial in Jerusalem.’ When the walls began to rise as if by magic, Sanballat got frightened, but still brazened out his anxiety with ridicule. ’What are these feeble Jews up to? Will they fortify themselves? Will they set up their sacrifices again? Will they turn the rubbish back into stones to build with?’

"A stone wall," says Tobiah, Hey, the sort of wall a fox couldn’t clamber over without knocking it down."

We writers get used to this sort of criticism after some great exhausting labour; and I should not have thought Nehemiah would have much minded such sneers. But ridicule is wonderfully stinging to those who are not hardened to it by use, and he felt it bitterly; he appealed to God to judge these scomers, and went on building.

Then the heathen leaders dropped their sorry jests, and prepared to attack the builders with armed men, and so crush the work with violence and blood. So sure of the result were they that they let out their tactics. They said: ’These builders shall not see us, nor know at what part to expect us; in a moment we will be in the midst of them, and slay them, and cause the work to cease.’

SINGLEHEART, CAPTAIN.

Forewarned, forearmed. Nehemiah instantly withdrew a number of men from the works, and armed them to the teeth, and disposed them in stations as for the defence of a city. He also girt a sword on every builder, and put a javelin into one of his hands. Then he took a lofty station, with a band of warriors round him, and a trumpeter by his side. He circiAated an order that wherever the trumpet should sound, thither all his men should run, with their weapons, from every side. So wrought they, trowel in one hand, javelin in another, swords by their side, and a great leader’s eye over all; and one-half their force paraded with shield and spear ’ from the rising of the mom till the stars appeared at eve.’ At night they all watched under arms, and no man put oflf his clothes except to wash them. Night and day were one to these gallant men till the mighty work was done: so can the spirit of a great leader animate a host, and make each pawn a knight, each mason a hero. The heathen leaders swallowed their boast, and never made a single attack. By that means they saved their skins, for if they had attacked a weak part of the walls, Nehemiah would have seen them from his elevation, and run to meet them with his picked men, sounding the trumpet as he ran. Then his soldiers and armed builders would have run in upon the foe from every side, and cut them to pieces in a moment. So the heathen leaders did not fight but tried assassination.

SINGLEHEART, POLITICIAN.

Sanballat and Geshem sent a friendly message to decoy Nehemiah to his death. ’ Come,’ said they, why should we quarrel over the matter? No doubt we can come to some friendly arrangement. Meet us in the plains of Ono; there are several villages there; choose which you like for this amicable meeting.’

Sorry schemers! Fancy these shallow traitors sending this to an Oriental statesman I — a bare hook without a bait. He did not condescend to be angry, or show them he saw through them.

He parried the proposal with cool contempt I am doing a great work; why should I leave it and interrupt it to come to you?

They sent a similar message four times. Then Nehemiah did a first-rate thing. Instead of varying his reply in the least, he sent the same formula four times, and I am all admiration at this; for, after all, when you have given a good answer, why admit even a shadow of imperfection in that answer by altering a word or two? And then, how like a rock it makes a man seem, to give the waves but one answer: immovability, whether they surge up or ripple up, come at him smiling or foaming.

Irritated by this granite contempt, Sanballat deviated from the Oriental into the ruffian; he did what corresponds in our day to sending an abusive post-card. He actually sent a letter, wide open, for everybody to read before it reached Nehemiah, and thus ran this ill-bred pagan’s lines:

’ It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu confirms it, that you and the Jews mean to rebel against Artaxerxes, and that you have built the wall with this object, and to be king yourself; and that you have bribed prophets to say there is a king in Jerusalem. We shall report all this to Artaxerxes unless you meet us as invited, and come to terms with us. This open letter was well calculated to alarm.

Lies of the sort sent from Jerusalem had ere now poisoned the monarch’s mind in Persia, and arrested a good work in Judea for many a long day.

Nehemiah sent him back an open letter in return. ’ There are no such things done as you pretend; you are feigning them all out of your own heart.’ From that hour the enemy resigned all direct attacks on him, but still endeavoured to detach a few friends from him; and here they had some success, having intermarried with Jewish families. The worst trap of all was now laid for him: a singularly wicked one, to catch him by means of his piety, and his desire to know God’s will in all things. The prophet Shemaiah and the prophetess Noadiah foretold a great danger, and that he could escape it only by shutting himself up in the Temple and closing the doors. This time, with all his sagacity, he did not divine treachery. Not his wisdom, but his high spirit, saved Singleheart from this trap.

’ What!’ said he; ’ shall such a man as I am flee? And what man, intrusted with God’s work, would skulk into the Temple merely to save his life?

I WILL NOT GO IN.’

Talk of lines like the sound of a trumpet, why, this was to speak thunder-bolts and act lightning. Here we see in action what the heathen poet taught in noblest song:

’ Summum crede nef as animam prsBf erre pndori Et propter vitam yiyeiidi perdere causas.’

After Singleheart had escaped this trap by his courage and his fidelity to a single purpose, he found that these prophecies came from lying prophets suborned by Tobiah and Sanballat.

Then in the spirit of his dispensation he invoked on their heads the curse of that God they had blasphemed.

After a feeble attempt to work upon the Jews they had intermarried with, Tobiah and Sanballat disappear from the narrative. The walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt in fiftytwo days, and Singleheart gave the glory to God. Taking the work and the time together, is there a parallel to this achievement? The Chinese Wall and the great Pacific Railway are far greater works, and much of the latter was built with the pick in one hand and the revolver in the other. But then, these vast works took years to complete.

Looking at the size of the city, the great height and breadth of the walls, it was an enormous work; much greater than the London Law-Courts, that have taken a dozen years to build — greater than the cathedral of Cologne, which has been centuries in hand. And when you consider that these walls were built in the teeth of an armed and implacable foe, built with the trowel in one hand the javelin in the other, and that the sleep of the workmen was broken with watching, and their clothes never taken off except to wash them, and flung on again half dry, it was an unrivalled feat of labour, zeal, judgment, courage, and piety, and will so remain to the end of tima NEHEMIAH, REFORMER.

Ezra came to Jerusalem fourteen years before Nehemiah; he left the holy seed of Judah pure at Babylon, but found it at Jerusalem mingled with that of idolaters. When he discovered this he rent his garment and mantle, and plucked off the hair of his head and beard, and sat down astonied until the evening sacrifice. But during that solemnity he rose and threw himself down at the gate of the Temple, and prayed and wept and confessed the sins of his people. His sorrow and his eloquence touched many hearts, and led to a public confession and to solemn pledges of reformation, especially from such of the offenders as belonged to Levi, Ezra’s own tribe. But it is clear from Nehemiah’s own account that intermarriage with heathen, and other abuses, proved too strong for Ezra in the longrun. Nehemiah found this malpractice and many others at Jerusalem. Indeed, his great enemy, the heathen Tobiah, owed much of his power to having married a Jewess of good family. Nehemiah set himself to reform this, but not this alone. He was not a better, but a greater, man than Ezra, and made wiser reforms, and kept them alive, which Ezra failed to do.

One thing that shocked him much was the usurious practices of the wealthier Jews, and their cruelty in selling their poor debtors into bondage. ’ What!’ said he; we have redeemed our brethren that were sold unto the heathen, and will ye sell your brethren V and they found nothing to answer.

Then he reminded them he had power to levy large exactions upon them, and besought them to imitate his moderation.

Such was the power of his example and his remonstrances that he actually induced the creditors to restore to the ruined debtors their houses, vineyards, and olive-yards, and a little of the forfeited produce to keep them alive through the famine. When the relenting creditors had bound themselves to this by oath, he took his tunic in both hands and shook it, and said, ’ May God so shake out every man from his house and from his labour who performeth not this promise. This was a master-stroke, and shows the man of genius. Such appeals to the senses as well as to the conscience take the whole mind by assault, and fix the matter for ever in the memory. His hearers cried ’ Amen I’ and praised the Lord, and — kept their promise.

All preceding governors of Jerusalem had acted on their powers and bled the people themselves, and even let their servants oppress and pillage them. Not so Nehemiah; with him it was more blessed to give than to receive. He kept a noble table, and entertained one hundred and fifty Jews every day from the city, besides hungry souls from the villages; but all this at his own expense; the governor’s allowance he never touched, because, as he said, the people were burdei; ied enough without that. His mind runs forward, and he relates this a little out of place — chapter v. 13-19. I have but placed it in its true sequence. It is a noble trait, and every generous heart goes with him, when with honest simplicity he bursts out, Think on me, my God, for good, according to all I have done for this people.’

Though he was nominal governor of Jerusalem for twelve years from the date of his first visit, it would seem, on a careful comparison of all his statements, that Hanani and Hananiah acted for him by his own appointment during a portion of that time as well as after it had expired. But as Ezra, both before and after Nehemiah’s arrival, was unable to cope persistently with the abuses of the day, so Nehemiah’s own lieutenants. failed to withstand them.

Probably Nehemiah himself felt there was no one in whom he could place a blind confidence; for, twelve years after his first visit, he came back to Jerusalem with enlarged powers, and this time he showed priests as well as laymen he was not a man to be trifled with.

Eliashib the priest had given his kinsman Tobiah the heathen an apartment in the Temple, and Tobiah had furnished it.

Nehemiah bundled out all his furniture and effects, and had the rooms purified after him.

He found a priest, grandson of this very Eliashib, married to a heathen. He chased him out of the Temple. On the other hand, he found that certain lay rulers, whose business it was to see the tithes paid to the priests and Levites, had so neglected them that many of that sacred tribe were working in the fields for a bare subsistence.

Nehemiah rebuked these negligent officials, and established storehouses for the tithes of com, new wine, and oil; and to secure the Levites against any future neglect in the distribution of these stores, he selected Shelemiah, a priest, Zadok, a scribe, and Fedaiah, a Levite, as almoners or distributors of these stores, and associated with them one Hanan, a man of approved fidelity.

Both priests and laymen had become loose in observing the Sabbath day. He found Jews treading the wine-presses, gathering in the harvests, and trading on the Sabbath day, and men of Tyre bringing fish and other wares into the markets of the city.

He treated natives and aliens alike, stopped the home trade, and closed the gates of the city against the Tyrians. But the Tyrians were hard to deal with; they lodged outside the wall, and offered their wares outside. Do that again,’ said Nehemiah, and I will lay hands on you.’ This frightened them away for good.

Then came his worst trouble, the persistent intermarriage with heathen.

Ezra had withstood this for years in vain.

Nehemiah had combated it with partial success; yet now Nehemiah found Jews who had married wives of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab, and their children could not speak Hebrew, but naturally spoke their mother-tongue.

Then he came out in a new character. He contended with them, -and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God not to give their daughters to heathen husbands nor their sons to heathen wives again.

After this outburst of impassioned zeal, which at first takes the student of his mind a little by surprise, he returned to his grave character, and reasoned the matter with those he had terrified into submission.

’What Jew,’ said he, "was ever so wise, so great, so beloved of God, as King Solomon? Yet outlandish women could make even him sin against God, and commit idolatry."

Nehemiah prevailed, and there is reason to believe that idolatry received its death-blow under his rule.

He ends his brief but noble record with his favourite prayer, ’ Remember me, O my God, for good.’ That prayer has long been granted. But the children of God on earth have not seen all his value. Do but enumerate the various parts he played, the distinct virtues he showed, the strokes of genius he extemporized — and all to served not himself, but his country and his God. Faithful courtier, yet true patriot; child of luxury, yet patient of hardship; inventive builder, impromptu general, astute politician, high-spirited gentleman, inspired orator, resolute reformer — born leader of men, yet humble before God.

He rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem; he restored the law of Moses. Tradition says iie lived fifty years after the events he records; he probably returned to Persia; but if he did, he was not the man to stay there half a century and leave the city and the law to take care of themselves.

Character is a key to facts; and it was not in Nehemiah’s character to live and desert the two great works of his life for fifty years or so. When, after two centuries of small events, small men, and no history, big events and the big men they generate came again to Judea and raised history from the dead, we find the stamp of Nehemiah and his pupils marked on the Jewish mind so plainly that the story of the Maccabees seems but a natural sequence of Nehemiah’s chronicle.

Nehemiah fought tooth and nail for all the law of Moses, and especially the Sabbath day.

Nehemiah tore the holy seed out of the embraces of the heathen, and ended the moral influences of idolatry. This was sure to drive the idolater, sooner or later, from the bloodless weapons that alone can conquer the mind, to persecution and brute force; and accordingly, in the next Hebrew record, behold those weapons levelled against constant souls, and the sword of heroic Judas.

Nehemiah, then, is not what hasty judges have called him, ’ one of the lesser lights.’ He is a gigantic figure that stalked across the page of history luminous, then glided into the dark abyss of time, but scattered sparks of historic light, and left, not one, but two immortal works behind him. As to the character of his piety, he relies on God. seeks His glory, and is unceasing in good works for his nation. But then, he despised lucre, and sought not the praise of men for those works.

It is no small matter ’to look to God alone, with much light or little. He lived under a covenant of works, and thought accordingly; yet methinks he needed but a word or two from Christ’s own lips to be a Christian saint.