Bible Commentaries

Nehemiah Journeys to Jerusalemwith the King's Permission, andFurnished with Royal Letters. He Makes aSurvey of the Walls, and Resolves toUndertake the Work of Building Them - Nehemiah 2

Three months after receiving the tidings concerning Jerusalem, Nehemiahperceived a favourable opportunity of making request to the king for leaveto undertake a journey to the city of his fathers for the purpose of buildingit, and obtained the permission he entreated, together with letters to thegovernors on this side the Euphrates to permit him to pass through theirprovinces, and to the keeper of the royal forests to supply wood forbuilding the walls and gates, and an escort of captains of the army andhorsemen for his protection (Nehemiah 2:1-9), to the great vexation of Sanballat theHoronite and Tobiah the Ammonite (Nehemiah 2:10). In the third night after hisarrival at Jerusalem, Nehemiah rode round the city to survey the walls, andincited the rulers of the people and the priests to undertake the work ofrebuilding them (Nehemiah 2:11-18). Sanballat and other enemies of the Jewsexpressed their contempt thereat, but Nehemiah encountered their ridiculewith serious words (Nehemiah 2:19, Nehemiah 2:20).

Nehemiah 2:1-2

In the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, whenwine was before him, Nehemiah as cupbearer took the wine and handed itto the king. Nisan is, according to the Hebrew calendar, the first month ofthe year; yet here, as in Nehemiah 1:1-11, the twentieth year of Artaxerxes is named,and the month Chisleu there mentioned (Nehemiah 1:1), which, after the Hebrewmethod of computing the year, was the ninth month and preceded Nisanby three months, is placed in the same year. This can only be explained onthe grounds that either the twentieth year of Artaxerxes did not coincidewith the year of the calendar, but began later, or that Nehemiah here usesthe computation of time current in anterior Asia, and also among the Jewsafter the captivity in civil matters, and which made the new year begin inautumn. Of these two views we esteem the latter to be correct, since itcannot be shown that the years of the king's reign would be reckoned fromthe day of his accession. In chronological statements they were reckoned according to the years ofthe calendar, so that the commencement of a year of a reign coincided withthat of the civil year. If, moreover, the beginning of the year is placed inautumn, Tishri is the first, Chisleu the third, and Nisan the seventh month. The circumstances which induced Nehemiah not to apply to the king tillthree months after his reception of the tidings which so distressed him, arenot stated. It is probable that he himself required some time fordeliberation before he could come to a decision as to the best means ofremedying the distresses of Jerusalem; then, too, he may not haveventured at once to bring his request before the king from fear of meetingwith a refusal, and may therefore have waited till an opportunityfavourable to his desires should present itself. לפניו יין, “wine was before the king,” is a circumstantial clause explanatoryof what follows. The words allude to some banquet at which the king and queen werepresent. The last sentence, “And I have not been sad before him” (רע according to רעים פּניך of Nehemiah 2:2, of a sadcountenance), can neither mean, I had never before been sad before him (deWette); nor, I was accustomed not to be sad before him; but, I had notbeen sad before him at the moment of presenting the cup to him(Bertheau), because it would not have been becoming to serve the kingwith a sad demeanour: comp. Esther 4:2. The king, however, noticed hissadness, and inquired: “Why is thy countenance sad, since thou art notsick? this is nothing but sorrow of heart, i.e., thy sadness of countenancecan arise only from sorrow of heart. Then I was very sore afraid;” becausethe unexpected question obliged him to explain the cause of his sorrow,and he could not tell how the king would view the matter, nor whether hewould favour his ardent desire to assist his fellow-countrymen in Judah.

Nehemiah 2:3

He nevertheless openly expressed his desire, prefacing it by theaccustomed form of wishing the king prosperity, saying: “Let the king livefor ever;” comp. Daniel 2:4; Daniel 3:9. “Why should not my countenance be sad?for the city, the place of my fathers' sepulchres, lieth waste, and its gatesare burned with dire.” The question, Why … ? means: I have certainlysufficient reason for sadness. The reason is, that (אשׁר) the citywhere are the graves of my fathers lieth waste.

Then the king, feeling interested, asked him: For what dost thou makerequest? על בּקּשׁ, to make request for or concerning athing, like Ezra 8:23; Esther 4:8; Esther 7:7. The question shows that the king wasinclined to relieve the distress of Jerusalem which had been just stated tohim. “And so I prayed to the God of heaven,” to ensure divine assistancein the request he was about to lay before the king. Then Nehemiahanswered (Nehemiah 2:5), “If it please the king, and if thy servant is well-pleasingbefore thee, (I beg) that thou wouldest send me to Judah, to the city of myfathers' sepulchres, that I may build it.” לפני ייטב,here and Esther 5:14, is of like meaning with בּעיני ייטב or טּוב, Esther 8:5; 2 Samuel 18:4: if thy servant is right in thine eyes,i.e., if he thinks rightly concerning the matter in question. The matter ofhis request is directly combined with this conditional clause by אשׁר, the connecting term, I beg, being easily supplied from the king'squestion: For what dost thou beg?

The king and the queen, who was sitting near him (שׁגל, Psalm 45:10), grant him permission to depart after he has, in answer to theirinquiry, fixed the period of his absence. Nehemiah makes the result of theconversation, “And it pleased the king,” etc., follow immediately upon thequestion of the king and queen: For how long shall thy journey be, andwhen wilt thou return? before telling us what was his answer to thisquestion, which is not brought in till afterwards, so that זמן לו ואתּנה must be understood as expressing: since I haddetermined the time.

Hereupon Nehemiah also requested from the king letters to the governorsbeyond (west of) the river (Euphrates), to allow him to travel unmolestedthrough their provinces to Judah (לי יתּנוּ, let them giveme = let there be given me; העביר, to pass or travel through acountry, comp. Deuteronomy 3:20); and a letter to Asaph, the keeper (inspector)of the royal forests, to give him timber to make beams for the gates of thecitadel by the temple, and for the walls of the city, and for the governor'sown house. These requests were also granted. פּרדּס in Song of Solomon 4:13; Ecclesiastes 2:5, signifies a park or orchard; it is a word of Aryan origin (inArmenian pardez, the garden round the house, in Greek παράδεισος ),and is explained either from the Sanscrit parta-dêça, a superior district, or(by Haug) from the Zend. pairi-daêza, a fenced-in place. In Old-Persian itprobably denoted the king's pleasure-grounds, and in our verse a royalwood or forest. Of the situation of this park nothing reliable can beascertained. As wood for extensive buildings was to be taken from it, thesycamore forest in the low plains, which had been the property of KingDavid (1 Chronicles 27:28), and became, after the overthrow of the Davidicdynasty, first a Babylonian, and then a Persian possession, may beintended.

(Note: Older expositors supposed a regio a Libano ad Antilibanum protensa et arboribus amoenissimus consitato be meant. In this view,indeed, they followed Song of Solomon 4:13, but incorrectly. Cler. thought it tobe a tractus terrarum in Judaea, qui Paradisus regius dicebaturJosephusspeaks (Ant. viii. 7. 3) of fine gardens and ponds at Etham, sevenmiles south of Jerusalem, where Solomon often made pleasureexcursions. Hence Ewald (Gesch. iv. p. 169, comp. iii. p. 328) thinksthat the פּרדּס which belonged to the king must have beenSolomon's old royal park at Aetham, which in the time of Nehemiahhad become a Persian domain, and that the hill town lying not far tothe west of it, and now called by the Arabs Fureidis, i.e., paradisaic,may have received its Hebrew name Beth-Kerem, i.e., house ofvineyards, from similar pleasure-grounds. Hereupon Bertheau groundsthe further conjecture, that “the whole district from Aetham to thehill of Paradise, situate about a league east-south-east of Aetham, mayfrom its nature have been once covered with forest; and no hesitationwould be felt in connecting the name of the mountain Gebel el-Fureidis or el-Feridis (Paradise-hill - hill which rises in a Pardes) withthe Pardes in question, if it could be proved that this name wasalready in existence in prae-Christian times.”All these conjectures rest on very uncertain bases. The DshebelFureidis is also called the Hill of the Franks. See the description of itin Robinson's Palestine, ii. p. 392f., and Tobler, Topographie vonJerusalem, ii. pp. 565-572.)

לקרות, to timber, to overlay, to cover with beams (comp. 2 Chronicles 34:11) the gates of the citadel which belongs to the house, i.e., tothe temple. This citadel - בּירה, in Greek Βᾶρις - by the temple ismentioned here for the first time; for in 1 Chronicles 29:1, 1 Chronicles 29:19, the whole templeis called בּירה. It was certainly situate on the same place whereHyrcanus I, son of Simon Maccabaeus, or the kings of the Asmonean race,built the akro'polis and called it Baris (Jos. Ant. xv. 11. 4, comp. withxviii. 4. 3). This was subsequently rebuilt by Herod when he repaired andenlarged the temple, and named Antonia, in honour of his friend MarkAntony. It was a citadel of considerable size, provided with corner towers,walls, chambers, and spacious courts, built on a north-western side of theexternal chambers of the temple, for the defence of that edifice, and did notextend the entire length of the north side of the present Haram, asRobinson (see Biblical Researches, p. 300) seeks to show; comp., on theother hand, Tobler, Topographic von Jerusalem, i. p. 688f., and Rosen,Haram von Jerusalem, p. 25f. וּלחומת is coordinate withלקרות: “and for the walls of the city;” the timber not being usedfor building the wall itself, but for the gates (Nehemiah 3:3, Nehemiah 3:6). “And for the house into which I come (to dwell).” This must beNehemiah's official residence as Pecha. For though it is not expresslystated in the present chapter that Nehemiah was appointed Pecha(governor) by Artaxerxes, yet Nehemiah himself tells us, Nehemiah 5:14, that hehad been Pecha from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes. Former governorshad perhaps no official residence becoming their position. By לבּית the temple cannot, as older expositors thought, be intended. Thisrequest also was granted by the king, “according to the good hand of myGod upon me;” comp. rem. on Ezra 7:6.

Nehemiah delivered the letter when he came to the governors on this sideEuphrates. The king had also sent with him captains of the army andhorsemen. The second half of Nehemiah 2:9 contains a supplementary remark, sothat ויּשׁלח must be expressed by the pluperfect. Ezra hadbeen ashamed to request a military escort from the Persian monarch (Ezra 8:22); but the king gave to the high dignitary called Pecha a guard ofsoldiers, who certainly remained with him in Jerusalem also for hisprotection (Ezra 4:17). Besides these, there were in his retinue his brethren, i.e.,either relations or fellow-countrymen, and servants, comp. Nehemiah 4:10; Nehemiah 5:10. That this retinue is not mentioned in the present verses, is owing to thefact that the journey itself is not further described, but only indirectlyalluded to.

When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite heard of hiscoming, it caused them great annoyance (להם ירע isstrengthened by גּדולה רעה, as in Jonah 4:1) that aman (as Nehemiah expresses himself ironically from their point of view)was come to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. Sanballat is calledthe Horonite either after his birthplace or place of residence, yet certainlynot from Horonaim in Moab, as older expositors imagined (Isaiah 15:5; Jeremiah 48:34), since he would then have been called a Moabite, but from eitherthe upper or nether Beth-horon, formerly belonging to the tribe ofEphraim (Joshua 16:3, Joshua 16:5; Joshua 18:13), and therefore in the time of Nehemiahcertainly appertaining to the region of the Samaritans (Berth.). Tobiah theAmmonite is called העבד, the servant, probably as being aservant or official of the Persian king. These two individuals wereundoubtedly influential chiefs of the neighbouring hostile nations ofSamaritans and Ammonites, and sought by alliances with Jewish nobles(Nehemiah 6:17; Nehemiah 13:4, Nehemiah 13:28) to frustrate, whether by force or stratagem, the effortsof Ezra and Nehemiah for the internal and external security of Judah. Nehemiah mentions thus early their annoyance at his arrival, by way ofhinting beforehand at their subsequent machinations to delay the fortifyingof Jerusalem.

Nehemiah's arrival at Jerusalem. He surveys the wall, and resolves torestore it. - Nehemiah 2:11 Having arrived at Jerusalem and rested three days (asEzra had also done, Ezra 8:32), he arose in the night, and some few menwith him, to ride round the wall of the city, and get a notion of itscondition. His reason for taking but few men with him is given in thefollowing sentence: “I had told no man what my God had put in my heartto do for Jerusalem.” Although he had come to Jerusalem with theresolution of fortifying the city by restoring its circumvallation, he spokeof this to no one until he had ascertained, by an inspection of the wall, themagnitude and extent of the work to be accomplished. For, being aware ofthe hostility of Sanballat and Tobiah, he desired to keep his intentionsecret until he felt certain of the possibility of carrying it into execution. Hence he made his survey of the wall by night, and took but few men withhim, and those on foot, for the sake of not exciting attention. The beast onwhich he rode was either a horse or a mule.

“And I went out by night by the valley-gate, and towards the dragon-well,and to the dung-gate.” אל־פּני, in the direction towards. The dragon-wellonly occurs here by this name. Judging from its position between thevalley-gate and the dung-gate, it is either identical with the well of Gihon(Robinson, Palestine, ii. p. 166), whose waters supply the upper andlower pools in the valley of Gihon, the present Birket el Mamilla andBirket es Sultan, or situate in its immediate neighbourhood. The valley-gate is the modern gate of the city leading to the valley of Gihon, andsituated at or near the present Jaffa gate; see rem. on Nehemiah 3:13. The dung-gate (האשׁפּת שׁער), which in Nehemiah 3:13 also is placed nextthe valley-gate, and was a thousand cubits distant therefrom, must besought for on the south-western side of Zion, where a road, to the south ofNebi Dâûd and the Zion gate, now descends into the valley of Hinnom,towards Sûr Baher. “And I viewed the walls of Jerusalem which laybroken down, and its gates which were consumed by fire.” The wordשׁבר, which the lxx read, “I was breaking down,” gives notolerable sense; for it cannot mean, I broke through the walls, or, I made apath through the ruins. Many MSS, however, and several editions, offerשׂבר; and R. Norzi informs us that D. Kimchi and Aben Ezra readשׁבר. שׂבר, of which only the Piel occurs in Hebrew, answers tothe Aramaean סבר, to look to something; and to the Arabic (sbr), toinvestigate; and ב סבר means to look on, to consider, to direct the eyes andthoughts to some object. In the open מ of הם Hiller conjecturesthat there is a trace of another reading, perhaps מפרצים; comp. Nehemiah 1:3.

“And I went on to the fountain-gate, and to the king's pool, and there wasno room for the beast to come through under me.” The very name of thefountain-or well-gate points to the foundation of Siloah (see rem. on Nehemiah 3:15); hence it lay on the eastern declivity of Zion, but not in the districtor neighbourhood of the present Bâb el Mogharibeh, in which traditionfinds the ancient dung-gate, but much farther south, in the neighbourhoodof the pool of Siloah; see rem. on Nehemiah 3:15. The King's pool is probably thesame which Josephus (bell. Jud. v. 4. 2) calls Σολομῶνος κολυμβήθρα , and places east of the spring of Siloah, and which issupposed by Robinson (Palestine, ii. pp. 149, 159) and Thenius (dasvorexil. Jerus., appendix to a commentary on the books of the Kings, p. 20) to be the present Fountain of the Virgin. Bertheau, however, on theother hand, rightly objects that the Fountain of the Virgin lying deep in therock, and now reached by a descent of thirty steps, could not properly bedesignated a pool. He tries rather to identify the King's pool with the outlet of a canalinvestigated by Tobler (Topogr. i. p. 91f.), which the latter regards as aconduit for rain-water, fluid impurities, or even the blood of sacrificedanimals; but Bertheau as an aqueduct which, perhaps at the place where itsentrance is now found, once filled a pool, of which, indeed, no trace has asyet been discovered. But apart from the difficulty of calling the outlet of acanal a pool (Arnold in Herzog's Realencycl. xviii. p. 656), thecircumstance, that Tobler could find in neither of the above-describedcanals any trace of high antiquity, tells against this conjecture. Much moremay be said in favour of the view of E. G. Schultz (Jerusalem, p. 58f.),that the half-choked-up pool near Ain Silwan may be the King's pool andSolomon's pool; for travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesmention a piscina grandis foras and natatoria Siloë at the mouth of thefountain of Siloah (comp. Leyrer in Herzog's Realencycl. xvi. p. 372). Seealso rem. on Nehemiah 3:15. Here there was no room for the beast to getthrough, the road being choked up with the ruins of the walls that had beendestroyed, so that Nehemiah was obliged to dismount.

Then I (went on) ascending the valley and viewing the wall, and so enteredby the valley-gate, and returned. ואהי with the participleexpresses the continuance of an action, and hence in this place thecontinuous ascent of the valley and survey of the wall. The נחל which he ascended was doubtless the valley of Kidron (קדרון נחל, 2 Samuel 20:23; 1 Kings 2:37, and elsewhere). ואבוא ואשׁוּב are connected, שׁוּב expressingmerely the idea of repetition (Gesenius, heb. Gram. §142, 3): I came againinto the valley-gate. Older expositors incorrectly explain these words tomean, I turned round, traversing again the road by which I had come;Bertheau: I turned to go farther in a westerly direction, and after makingthe circuit of the entire city, I re-entered by the valley-gate. This sense iscorrect as to fact, but inadmissible, as requiring too much to complete it. Ifwe take אשׁוּב adverbially, these completions are unnecessary. Nehemiah does not give the particulars of the latter portion of his circuit,but merely tells us that after having ascended the valley of Kidron, he re-entered by the valley-gate, and returned to his residence, obviouslyassuming, that from the upper part of the vale of Kidron he could onlyreturn to the valley-gate at the west by passing along the northern part ofthe wall.

He had spoken to no one of his purpose (Nehemiah 2:12); hence the rulers of thecity knew neither whither he was going nor what he was doing (i.e.,undertaking) when he rode by night out of the city gate accompanied by afew followers. As yet he had said nothing either to the Jews (the citizensof Jerusalem), the priests, the nobles, the rulers, or the rest who did thework. החרים and הסּגנים are connected, as in Ezra 9:2 השּׂרים and הסּגנים. The nobles (חרים,nobiles) or princes are the heads of the different houses or races of thepeople; סגנים, the rulers of the town, the authorities. המּלאכה עשׂה, the doers of the work, are the builders;comp. Ezra 3:9. When these are, in comparison with the priests, nobles,and rulers, designated as יתר, the remnant, this is explained by thefact that the priests and rulers of the people were not actively engaged inbuilding. המּלאכה, the work in question, i.e., here the buildingof the walls. כּן עד, until thus, i.e., until now, until thetime apparent from the context. Nehemiah then, having inspected thecondition of the ruined walls, and being now persuaded of the possibilityof restoring them, made known his resolution to the nobles, the rulers, andthe community, i.e., to a public assembly called together for this purpose(Nehemiah 2:17). “Ye see (have before your eyes, know from experience) thedistress that we are in, that Jerusalem lieth waste: come (לכוּ), letus build up the walls of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.” Inother words: Let us by building our walls put an end to the miserablecondition which gives our adversaries occasion to reproach us.

To gain the favourable regard of the assembly for his design, he informsthem how God had so far prospered his undertaking: I told them of thehand of my God, that it = that the hand my God had graciously providedfor me, i.e., that God had so graciously arranged my journey to Jerusalem;and the king's words that he had spoken to me, sc. with respect to thebuilding of the wall, of which we are told Nehemiah 2:8 only thus much, that theking gave orders to the keeper of the royal forest to give him wood forbuilding. Encouraged by this information, the assembly exclaimed, “Let usarise and build;” and “they strengthened their hands for good,” i.e., theyvigorously set about the good work.

When the adversaries of the Jews heard this, they derided their resolution. Beside Sanballat and Tobiah (comp. Nehemiah 2:10), Geshem the Arabian is alsonamed as an adversary: so, too, Nehemiah 6:1-2, and Nehemiah 6:6, where Gashmu, thefuller pronunciation of his name, occurs. He was probably the chief ofsome Arab race dwelling in South Palestine, not far from Jerusalem (comp. the Arabians, Nehemiah 6:1). These enemies ironically exclaimed: What is this thingthat ye do? will ye rebel against the king? The irony lies in the fact thatthey did not give the Jews credit for power to build fortifications, so as tobe able to rebel. Comp. Nehemiah 6:6, where Sanballat, in an open letter toNehemiah, again reproaches them with rebellion.

Nehemiah 2:20

Nehemiah replied with impressive gravity: “The God of heaven,He will prosper us, and we His servants will arise and build; but ye haveno portion, nor right, nor memorial in Jerusalem.” צדקה like 2 Samuel 19:29. זכּרון, memorial; only members of thecongregation, who may hope to live in their descendants in Jerusalem, canbe said to have a memorial there.