Nehemiah 1: 1 – 11
Hey, How ya doin’??
1 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel, 2 that Hanani one of my brethren came with men from Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. 3 And they said to me, “The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.” 4 So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. 5 And I said: “I pray, LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, 6 please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father’s house and I have sinned. 7 We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. 8 Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; 9 but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’ 10 Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand. 11 O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” For I was the king’s cupbearer.
What do you call a person who can speak three languages? (tri-lingual) What then do you call a person who can speak fluently two languages? (bi-lingual) Lastly what do you call a person who speaks only one language? (American)
When I first went on a mission trip to a Latin country I didn’t understand how important greetings were when meeting new people. I used to greet people by saying, “Hola,” which nobody else does.
The result of saying this is that people would think that I didn’t speak their language and would ask my friends questions about me.
I was annoyed by this, but I realized it was my own fault that they treated me like that because I didn’t greet them in a way that they were expecting in their culture language. Once I started saying things like, “E ai cara, beleza” (a popular greeting in Brazil) people started treating me somewhat like a normal person.
Because greetings are a part of every conversation, it is important to know how to use them properly and with confidence. It’s easy to become fluent with their use because you have an opportunity to practice them every time you talk to someone.
Over the course of a day you can practice dozens of times until you have achieved total confidence in their use.
The first moments of an interaction you have with someone are crucial because they set the tone for the conversation to follow. If you start a conversation doubting yourself and unsure of what you’re saying this will affect your performance for the rest of the conversation.
But if you can effortlessly use the right greetings then you will feel confident during the rest of the conversation.
It’s important that you feel confident when greeting someone because they will quickly form a first impression of you that may be hard to change later. If you greet someone with confidence, they will feel more comfortable with you and will form a positive first impression.
If you stumble around and aren’t sure of what you’re doing, they may misjudge you and speak to you differently than you’d like.
In the United States we have different ways of speaking. So, it is important to research how the citizens of the area you are visiting talk.
To gain confidence and control during conversations here is a list of greetings that you can use.
General greetings (Formal)
These greetings can be used in any formal situation, such as a business meeting or meeting someone’s parents, and they can also be used in informal situations as well.
Hello
How are you? or How’re you?
How are you doing? or How ya doin’?
How is everything?
How’s everything going?
These greetings can be used in any informal situation. To show extra enthusiasm you can add “Hey” to the beginning of these greetings.
(Hey) What’s up (man/dude/bro/their name)?
(Hey) Good to see you.
(Hey) How are things (with you)?
(Hey) How’s it going?
The pronunciation can be shortened to “goin’.” A typical response to this question is “It’s going good.”
How’s life been treating you?
“What’s up?”
What’s good?
What’s happening?
The pronunciation is often shortened to “happenin’.”
Greeting a person, you haven’t seen for a long time (Formal)
It has been a long time.
It’s been too long.
What have you been up to all these years?
It’s always a pleasure to see you.
How long has it been?
What’s new?
Greeting a person, you haven’t seen for a long time (Informal)
Long time no sees.
This is the most common.
Where have you been hiding?
This is a playful way of greeting someone.
It’s been ages (since I’ve seen you).
How’ve you been?
Now that you have this list of greetings at your disposal, go out in to the world and start practicing them. Make sure you use them with confidence so that you make a good first impression. Try to use a different greeting every time you visit a different location.
Today we are going to start our study in the book of Nehemiah. In chapter 1 we come across the scene of Nehemiah greeting some men from Israel. As an important high official in the Persian Empire Nehemiah welcomes the group and starts up a friendly yet info seeking conversation.
Nehemiah is the thrilling story of a man whom God had placed in a position of great authority in the Persian Empire, with a view to his achieving what had previously been forbidden, the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. It was no mean task. Judah was surrounded by powerful enemies who opposed the rebuilding, and who were willing to use any means to seek to prevent it, and, at their instigation, the king of Persia himself had, in the early part of his reign, issued an order for such work to cease. It would take a man of God of great influence and tact to reverse the situation. And such was Nehemiah.
Nehemiah is revealed as discreet and fearless, as well as being a brilliant organizer, demonstrating by his achievements that he had the capacity to win men to fall into line with his, and God’s purposes. Not all the Jews in Judah welcomed his arrival, but his abilities under God are brought out by the way that he persuades almost all to assist him in the work regardless of their own loyalties.
But his vision was greater than that. He saw himself as establishing the eschatological Jerusalem promised by the prophets, ‘the holy city’ of Isaiah 52.10. And from 11.1 onwards we have a description of that achievement, commencing with the repopulation of Jerusalem with Jews from the new Israel; the guarantee that the worship of Jerusalem would be true, being founded on priests and Levites whose genealogies could be determined,; the celebrations that greeted the building of the wall that made all this possible; and the careful activity of Nehemiah in ensuring the purity of the city. Like Ezra, Nehemiah ends with a description of the putting away of idolatrous foreign wives who were the spark which could have returned the new Israel to idolatry. To us this might appear almost an irrelevance, but to the people who knew the harm that idolatry had done to Israel/Judah, it was the most important of all the steps taken to ensure the continuation of the community as YHWH’s people.
Following the return to Judah and Jerusalem, from Exile in Babylonia, of the ‘remnant of the captivity’ in 538 BC, along with those who followed later, the remnant had been having a pretty hard time of it (Nehemiah 1.3). This was not surprising because they faced opposition from four powerful groups:
• 1). Their fellow-Jews who had remained in the land, and who were non-believers, worshipping both YHWH and idols, and who were therefore excluded from worshipping with the remnant. They probably saw the returnees as bigoted upstarts. Therefore, they were bitter, especially as this excluded their right to worship in the new Temple, which was open only to those who were free from idolatry in any form. And their bitterness would have been increased by those among the remnant who claimed back family land which they had taken over.
• 2). The non-Jews who were now in the area and who resented their presence as newcomers, seeing them as interlopers, and also resenting the similar claiming back of family land.
• 3). The residents of Samaria, who had become so on being exiled to Samaria from other lands where they had worshipped other gods. They shared the resentment of the Jews who were not exiled, because they too were prevented by these newcomers from worshipping with the remnant in the new Temple. Furthermore, they had considerable influence with the Persian authorities.
• 4). The non-Yahwists, who were in lands round about, who had been enemies of Judah of old, and who also resented their presence and the idea of them setting up a new ‘state’.
So, they were looked on with hostility by all, apart, that is, by those few in the land who had remained wholly faithful to YHWH, and who therefore now worshipped with them, or by those who had recommitted themselves to YHWH (Ezra 6.21).
There were moreover powerful voices among their adversaries, and these included the governor of the district of Samaria. These adversaries were in a position constantly to send accusations to the Persian king, and also to arrange that the remnant was given a very hard time. With regard to giving them a hard time it was not difficult in those days to organize gangs who could be disruptive, for when they did so, who would be able to prove anything? And they looked on a half-desolated Jerusalem as fair game, and no doubt took advantage of any wealth which came to Jerusalem because of the existence of the Temple with its worship. The remnant had partially tried to deal with this difficulty by building a wall round Jerusalem, which confirms that there was continual harassment of that partially populated city (Ezra 4.12-13, 21), but this had been circumvented by their enemies (Ezra 4.8-23), who, once they had persuaded the king of Persia to intervene and stop the work, had gone beyond their authority and had gleefully prevented the walls from being rebuilt, and had burned the new gates with fire (Ezra 4.23).
But it was not only Jerusalem that was vulnerable. In their own dwelling places situated among the peoples of the land the returnees were even more vulnerable. We do not know how far the governors of the area who followed Zerubbabel, and were prior to Nehemiah (445 BC), were prepared to act in their defence.
There can be little doubt that the two books, Ezra and Nehemiah, were brought together as one at an early date, and were early seen as one. All the external evidence points to this as a fact. Thus the question must arise as to whether they were ever issued separately, for it was not until the time of Origen, and then Jerome, that they were spoken of as two books, and even Origen agrees that in Hebrew tradition they were seen as one. Indeed, on the evidence that we have it was not until around the middle ages (1448 AD) that the Jews themselves depicted them as separate works, and this when the Hebrew text of the Scriptures was put into print. Nevertheless, the fact that this did occur demonstrates that there are good grounds for seeing them as separate works, and this would appear to be confirmed by the use in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 of closely related lists, which, while not being identical, are sufficiently close for them to be repetitive, something unlikely to have happened in a joint work. It is also suggested by the fact that both books end with the removal of idolatrous foreign wives, something which could be the ultimate achievement of these godly leaders, as it rooted out attempts to return to idolatry. But in that case, why were the two books brought together so early? One good reason why they might initially have been brought together may have been in order to conform the number of Old Testament books to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet (just as the twelve ‘minor’ prophets were seen as one for a similar reason).
On these grounds, therefore, they have been treated in the commentary as separate books, something which is attested by their headings. Nevertheless, their relationship is certainly very close, and, indeed, that is what we would expect from two books written largely by contemporaries around the same time referring to contemporary events. Nehemiah’s abrupt and forceful style, however, punctuated with asides and frank comments, is unique, and there are few who would doubt his authorship of the main body of chapters 1 to 7 of the book, together with parts of chapters 12.31-13.31. Besides the change of subject between the end of Ezra and the commencement of the activities of Nehemiah might be being too abrupt for them to be part of the same work.
The book opens with a typical opening line. Nehemiah was not a prophet and therefore we would not expect it to say too much. But he was an extremely important person within the Persian Empire. He was ‘cupbearer to the king’. That does not mean that he was a waiter. It indicates that he was the man who received the cup from a servant, and after tasting it to see if it was poisoned by pouring the wine into his hand and drinking it, handed it to the king. He was thus the one man in a position to most easily poison the king. Consequently, he was a man in whom the king placed absolute trust. And we soon discover that Nehemiah had entry into the king’s presence at other times, which accentuates his importance. Few had that privilege.
1 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel, 2 that Hanani one of my brethren came with men from Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.
It is possible that the simple title ‘Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah’ was considered by him as enough to indicate who he was. It may well have been his view that it was only lesser men who had to provide details. In his day his name said everything. He was, of course aware that he intended to provide some detail later (verse 11), but that was during the narrative. Here he was simply ‘Nehemiah ben Hacaliah’, a man of renown. Nehemiah means ‘Yah has comforted’.
As with the name, so with the date. He assumes that the recipient of his account will know which king it is whose reign it is the twentieth year of, (he also knows that he will make it clear in 2.1). This may portray the haughtiness and contemporary attitude of someone who felt that there was no need to say more, because the long reign of Artaxerxes was a permanent institution throughout the empire. He would not have known that he was writing for posterity.
The month of Chislev around November/December. It was the ninth month of the Jewish calendar commencing from the first month Nisan (Passover month - March/April).
‘The fortress Shushan (Susa).’ This was the winter residence of the Persian kings, with Ecbatana being their summer residence (Ezra 6.1). The ruins of Susa lie near the River Karun and it was once, in the second millennium BC, the capital of Elam, continuing as such into the first millennium. It was a powerful and impressive city. It was finally sacked by Ashurbanipal of Assyria in 645 BC, who sent men into exile from there to Samaria. But it was restored, and it was at Susa that Daniel had one of his visions (Daniel 8.2). Darius 1st built his palace there, and it was there that Xerxes (Ahasuerus) demoted his chief wife, Vashti, replacing her with Esther (Esther 1-2). The fortress had again been restored by Artaxerxes.
It is apparent from this verse that Nehemiah regularly received fellow-Jews as guests into the king’s fortress, so that it is not surprising that Jewish affairs obtained a hearing at high levels. Hanani, (‘He is gracious’), whom he received at this time, along with other prominent Jews, may well have been his brother, although the word need only indicate a kinsman. We do not know whether this was just a private visit, or whether it was a deputation concerning some official matter. Nor do we know whether they were visiting from Judah or had simply been to Judah on a visit. Nehemiah may well have summoned them on learning of their arrival from Judah because he wanted to learn about the situation there.
Whichever way it was he asked them concerning the situation in Judah and Jerusalem, and how ‘those who had escaped, who were left of the captivity’ were going on. He clearly had a deep interest in the land of his forefathers. The question then arises as to who he was referring to by these words. Does he mean the returned exiles who had ‘escaped’ from Babylonia, a remnant of the captivity, who had returned to Judah (compare Ezra 9.8 which speaks of ‘a remnant to escape’), or is he speaking of those who had initially escaped captivity and had remained in Judah? The former appears more likely, especially in view of Ezra 9.8. It is certainly not likely that he was unaware of the fact that exiles had returned to Judah from Babylonia under the decrees of the kings of Persia, and he would naturally as a Jew himself be concerned about their welfare.
3 And they said to me, “The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.”
We have already seen in Ezra that the Jews who had returned from Babylon saw themselves as the true Israel, ‘the remnant’ of Israel who ‘escaped’ (Ezra 3.8; 9.8). It is therefore quite clear that it is the returnees who had established themselves in Judah who were seen as ‘the remnant who are left of the captivity (exile)’. Does this then mean that Nehemiah did not see himself as a part of the remnant of the captivity? The answer, of course, is no. His heart and his spirit were with them. What he did not have was permission to go. Like Daniel before him, he was not in a job that he could leave at will. He was a slave, albeit a very exalted one, of the king of Persia.
‘Are in great affliction and reproach.’ The word used for ‘affliction’ is regularly translated ‘evil’. Great evil had come upon them. This suggests that they were having a very difficult time indeed, and reminds us how little we know about the problems that they faced, problems of drought, recurring violence, and constant antagonism of their neighbors. The word for reproach indicates the constant criticism and hatred that was directed against them because they refused to dilute the worship of the true and living God of Israel by allowing non-Jews to worship with them. All the pagans around them sought to bring them into shame, the non-believing Jews who had remained in the land and were largely only semi-worshipers of Yahweh; the settled immigrants in Samaria; and the out and out idolaters. The returnees, and those who sided with them, were being treated as outcasts and pariahs because of their faithfulness to truth. The situation had no doubt been made worse by the putting away of wealthy idolatrous wives, who were put away because of their idolatry which was affecting the remnant. They would have had great influence among their own people (Ezra 9-10).
Furthermore, this appalling situation was revealed physically in the state of Jerusalem. Because of their adversaries the walls that they had been attempting to rebuild had been broken down, and its gates burned with fire (Ezra 4.23). All their attempts to make themselves secure had been stymied. The reaction of Nehemiah here, and the fact that it is mentioned at all, demonstrates that this must have occurred recently. He would have known perfectly well what had happened to the walls of Jerusalem because of the Babylonian invasion, and it was history long gone (over one hundred and forty years previously). News of it would hardly, therefore, have been brought to him, nor would it have stirred him. It suggests that he had seemingly previously heard, and rejoiced over the fact, that the walls were being rebuilt so that the fact that they had now been again destroyed hit him hard.
So Nehemiah now did what God’s true people always do when they face adversity. He prayed to YHWH. The prayer is very much an individualistic one, although parts of it can, as we would expect, be paralleled elsewhere, for he prayed with a full knowledge of his people’s liturgical past. He was not praying out of a vacuum, but with a good knowledge of Judah’s prayers of old.
4 So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
He did not rush into his prayer. He pondered deeply over the news that he had received, something which caused him to sit down and weep as he thought of the sufferings of his people. He mourned over the news for a good number of days, fasting and praying ‘before the God of Heaven’. This last was the name by which YHWH was known in Persia and Babylon and to foreigners (Jonah 1.9). The purpose of fasting was in order to express grief, and in order to prevent anything interfering with his praying.
5 And I said: “I pray, LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments,
In his approach Nehemiah expresses three things which should be a constant in all our praying; the greatness of God, the wonder of His love, and the necessity for obedience to His covenant in accordance with His requirements. He then calls on God to be attentive to his constant and persevering prayer for God’s people.
6 please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father’s house and I have sinned. 7 We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.
He prays that God will hear what he has to say and will see the situation. And that as a result He will listen to his prayer, a prayer from one who is his servant, a prayer which he is bringing before him day and night. He was thus coming in humility, but also in consistent, persevering prayer, in the way in which Jesus would later teach us to pray (Luke 11.5-13). And he underlines that he is coming on behalf of ‘the children of Israel’ who are God’s servants.
Confession of our sins must always be central to our prayers. ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us’. As God says in 2 Chronicles 7.14, ‘if My people who are called by My Name, will humble themselves, and will pray, and will seek my face, and will turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven, I will forgive their sins, and I will heal their land’. This was what Nehemiah now did.
Confession of sin had long been a requirement of the covenant. The confession of the sins of the children of Israel was one purpose of the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16.21), and confession of sin was a requirement for forgiveness of specific sins (Leviticus 5.5). Furthermore, confession of sin was one of the requirements if God was to restore His people from captivity (Leviticus 26.40). Thus, while he had no sacrifice to offer, and no goat substitute, what Nehemiah could do was confess the sins of his people (Psalm 32.5; Proverbs 28.13; Daniel 9.20). It was an acknowledgement that Israel had deserved all that had happened to them.
He did not exclude himself from this confession of sins, confessing his own sin and the sins of his father’s house. And he spells out what he means by sin in terms of dealing corruptly with God, and not observing the commandments, statutes and ordinances (judgments) laid down by Moses. He makes no excuses.
It is clear from this that Nehemiah was well acquainted with Levitical teaching and Deuteronomic teaching. He now calls on God to be mindful of His word and of His promises.
8 Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; 9 but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’
Thus he reminds God of His promises. Promises made to Moses as to what would happen if when His people had trespassed and were scattered abroad, they returned to Him and kept His commandments and did them. His promise had been that no matter how far they had been scattered, even to the uttermost part of Heaven, he would gather them from there and bring them to the place which He had chosen to cause His Name to dwell
From the point of view of Nehemiah’s prayer, the important point was that YHWH had now done this thing and had brought His people to the place in which He had caused His Name to dwell there. God had gloriously delivered them and he was therefore puzzled why God, having done so, had left His people in such deep anguish and distress. It did not seem consistent with the promise.
He now points out that they are not just any people. They are the people whom YHWH had in the past redeemed by His great power and His mighty hand from among the Egyptians (Exodus 32.11). Surely, he was saying, You did not show your compassion towards them for nothing?
10 Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand.
Here then were the people whom God had delivered in accordance with His promises, His servants whom He had redeemed by His great power and His strong hand (Exodus 32.11). Now he was about to ask that YHWH would intervene on their behalf. We note that there is no criticism of YHWH, no question as to why He had done what He had, only a plea that, having already done what He had, He would now act further on behalf of His people through Nehemiah. His confession of sin was a recognition that God’s people were still receiving their due punishment for sin. Redemption by great power and a strong hand echoes the Exodus deliverance (Exodus 32.11; 6.1; 13.9). The return from Exile could be seen as another Exodus, and that deliverance also had been followed by times of anguish and misery as scripture reveals.
He makes clear that he is not praying for an unresponsive people. he is praying for those who fear YHWH’s Name.
11 O Lord, I pray, please let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” For I was the king’s cupbearer.
Nehemiah recognizes that much God-fearing prayer is going up from the returned exiles, to which he now adds his own prayers. And he calls on God to be attentive to their combined prayers. Note his continual emphasis on the fact that he and they are God’s servants. Moses is God’s servant, he is God’s servant, the returnees are God’s servants. And the reason that he is confident that God will hear is because they ‘delight to fear His Name’. To ‘fear His Name’ means not only that they worship Him with due reverence and awe, but also that they ‘fear God and keep His commandments’ (Ecclesiastes 12.13). We are reminded in this regard of the words of the Psalmist, ‘if I regard iniquity in my heart, YHWH will not hear me’ (Psalm 66.18). We should note that this fear is not a craven fear. It is something which is a delight to them. They enjoy being God’s servants.
We do not know at what stage Nehemiah’s concern for his people turned to a recognition that he was able to do something about it. But this is what often happens when we pray. God suddenly says, ‘well, why don’t you do something about it?’ However, such a suggestion would have filled Nehemiah’s heart with apprehension. It may seem to us a simple task to lay a petition before the king, but it was far from being so. The appeal could not be made directly. The petitioner had in some way to draw the king’s attention to the fact that he had an appeal to make, and then hope that the king was feeling benevolent. If the king was in a bad mood it could result in the petitioner’s death.
The day had come when he knew that he must risk all and place his petition before the king. And so he called on God to prosper him on that day, and grant him mercy in the sight of ‘this man’. As God’s servant he was casting his future upon God. We can compare the similar situation with Esther in Esther 4.11, 6. ‘This man’ may well have been an intentional attempt by Nehemiah to remind himself that, however great the king might be, he was in the end only a man, or indeed as an attempt to remind God that Artaxerxes was only a man who was at His disposal.
Nehemiah now indicates his own exalted status, and why it was that he had access to the king, and not only access, but access as the king’s confidante. It was because he was the king’s cupbearer. It was he who would have responsibility for the selection of which wines would be presented before the King and would himself drink from the king’s cup prior to the king partaking, by pouring some into his hand and drinking it. This was as a guard against poisoning. His delicate palate would immediately discern any foreign element. He would also be expected to provide convivial conversation for the king, and tactfully hear whatever the king had to say. He could thus exert considerable influence over the king. The office would often be combined with other important offices.
