Day 139. Nehemiah 5-7

Apparently the building of the walls of Jerusalem, which is hurrying forward now at the fastest possible pace, is causing a financial hardship on those rural Jews who had not been part of the exile (5:1ff). They are laboring on the wall, while responsibility for their farms and freeholds is falling upon their wives and children. They are being forced to mortgage their fields and their vineyards and even pledge the labor of children "to get grain, that they may live" to pay "the kings' tax" (5:2-4). Now they cry out because they are being constrained to go the Babylonian exiles, middle and upper-class Jews who are on the whole better off, for loans, on which they are being forced to pay interest. "Our flesh is the same as that of our kindred," they tell Nehemiah, and demand relief.
Nehemiah is angry when he hears this, and he gathers the nobles and officials whom he accuses of callously exploiting their own kindred (5:7). He excoriates those who are making loans at interest and taking the lives and property of fellow Jews as security—"The thing that you are doing is not good," he says. Taking interest from fellow Jews or making them slaves is expressly forbidden by the law of Moses (see Leviticus 25:35-37). Nehemiah demands that those who are doing these things restore everything and demand nothing more of their kindred, and stop the practice of taking interest (5:11-12). If they do not, they stand in peril of being "shaken out and emptied" by God (5:13). And such is the power of his personality that the people meekly promise to do as they are told.
Those who are engaged doing the will of God must act generously. In this Nehemiah seeks to set a good example by his own behavior as governor, not extorting food and wine for himself as former governors had or allowing his servants to lord it over his subjects. Instead Nehemiah tells us that he feeds no less that one hundred and fifty people at his own table, both Jews and "foreigners" (5:16-17). He calls upon the LORD to "remember for [his] good . . . all that [he] has done for this people" (5:18)—a prayer that is repeated a number of times in the Book of Nehemiah. Again and again, he reports to God upon the work he has accomplished and asks for his approval, as a governor might report to his monarch.
But in spite of his virtuous behavior, those foreign enemies, whose power has been threatened by Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the wall, start plotting against him, accusing him of fortifying Jerusalem to support his intention to make himself king of Judah (6:6). This was a serious accusation amounting to treason against the Persian king. (We don't know, but this may have been the reason why Zerubbabel, the earlier governor, suddenly disappears from the narrative. As a descendent of King David he may have been removed for having such royal ambitions.) Nehemiah sees these accusations for what they are, a way to undermine his self-confidence and authority. His enemies, Tobiah and Samballat, even go so far as pay off the prophet Shemaiah and the prophetess Noadiah to give Nehemiah false messages to frighten him. When he is told to hide in the temple because there is a plot is afoot to assassinate him (6:10-14), Nehemiah, who seems not to be without
personal courage, dismisses these words with the contempt they deserve and goes on with the task of building the wall, all the while calling upon the LORD to settle his grudges (6:14).
At last the wall is completed, and the prestige of the Jewish community is greatly enhanced in the eyes their Gentile enemies, who are now "afraid," because they realize the hand of God is at work in all this (6: 16). But Nehemiah has enemies even among his own people. We have already been told in 3:5 that the nobles of Tekoa would not "put their shoulders to the work of their LORD." Now we discover that they are exchanging letters with Tobiah, because "many in Judah [are] bound by oath to him" (6:18). They report to him and form a "fifth column" in the Jewish community.
But once the wall is finished and the gates are installed, Nehemiah sets a watch and prepares for the next major act of his administration. We are given a list of those Jewish families who had thus far returned from captivity in Babylon and are now settled in Jerusalem and its surrounds. (It is worth noting that by no means all the descendents of the Jews carried into captivity by King Nebuchadnezzar return to their homeland. Many felt that they were better off in the land where they had been exiles, and Babylon continues to have a large Jewish population throughout ancient times, and it remains a center of Jewish thought and culture into the Middle Ages.) Now Nehemiah gathers "all Israel settled in their towns" (7:73) in preparation for the next important event of the drama of the return from captivity, the reading of the Law of Moses by Ezra the scribe.
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