that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and [certain] men of Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, who were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.
A man serving in a Persian palace receives visitors from Judah, and his first question is about the survivors and about Jerusalem. What he asked shows where his heart already was, long before the news reached him.
The book opens by showing the man before the work. His job was secular and his surroundings were comfortable.
The opening chapter describes the secret exercises by which God prepares the vessel for the special work in hand. Ezra, the instrument of a former revival, was not only a priest but a scribe — a student well versed in the word of God. Nehemiah was more a practical man of affairs. He held a responsible secular position as the cup-bearer to the king in the palace of Shushan. But the easy life of the palace, the well-paid position he held, and the king's favour did not lessen his interest in the people of God and the city of Jerusalem.
One writer spells out the case Nehemiah could have made for minding his own business.
Personally, he was surrounded by every kind of comfort. As far as that went, it was a sorry exchange to leave the court of the great king and to go into all the desolations of the land and of Jerusalem. He might well have reasoned to himself: "Why should I trouble myself about Judea? It was because of our sins that we were driven out, and it is obvious that the people who are there are utterly unworthy. They are behaving without a thought or care for the glory of God. Why should I trouble myself about it? … It is no good to think of the people of God. It is only a question of the soul individually. All I have to do is to serve the Lord where I am."
Nehemiah's question has two halves. Each half names a different group.
His question shows that his heart took in all the people of the land. He asked about "the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile" — that is, about those left behind when so many went into captivity in Babylon. He also asked "concerning Jerusalem," meaning the remnant that had gone up, with the permission of Cyrus, to build the Lord's house. So he was in fellowship with the heart of God, taken up as he was with His people and His interests. … They never dreamed of isolating themselves from the whole nation, nor of seeking the welfare of a single tribe only.
The visit came at a datable moment, to a man born in exile.
Nehemiah was a young man, born in captivity. It was in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year (445 B.C.), that Hanani his brother visited him with certain men out of Judah. The question he asked them shows at once the deep interest he had in God's people. Though he had never seen Jerusalem, the city of his fathers, he loved it and felt like all godly captives. One of the Psalms puts that feeling well — "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!" (Psalm 137:5-6). Though he lived in prosperity, his heart was with his people.
Nehemiah's address was Shushan. His heart lived somewhere else.
In his circumstances, Nehemiah was not on divine territory. He was in Shushan, Persian territory. But he was there under the governmental ordering of God, and his heart was not there. … Here we see a man whom providence placed in Shushan, the palace. Faith took him out of it, and brought him, in exercise of heart under the hand of God, back to divine territory.
Hanani does not disappear after this verse. He has a part in what follows.
Hanani, whom Nehemiah calls "my brother," is mentioned again once the wall is finished. He was the one who brought the first news of the sad state of the city and of the Jews, as told in Nehemiah 1:2. He is linked here with Hananiah, a ruler in the city — "a more faithful and God-fearing man than many." … To have such men identify themselves with him in his service must have been an encouragement, granted to him by God.
- Place. Nehemiah held a comfortable, well-paid post in a Persian palace. None of it lessened his interest in God's people or His city.
- Question. His question showed where his heart already lived. He asked about those left behind and about the remnant that had returned.
- Fellowship. He cared about the whole people, not one favoured corner of it. That is fellowship with the heart of God.
- Faith. Providence placed him in Shushan; faith took him out of it. His heart was never there.
- Preparation. God prepares the man before He gives him the work. Even the messenger who brought the bad news became a fellow worker.
And they said to me, Those who remain, that are left of the captivity there in the province, are in great affliction and reproach; and the wall of Jerusalem is in ruins, and its gates are burned with fire.
Word reaches Nehemiah in the Persian palace about the Jews who went back to Judah, and the news is bleak. Commentators see more than a news bulletin here: the report describes a moral condition as well as a ruined city.
The single word "province" carries the humiliation.
Israel was no longer a nation settled in their own land, as they had been under Joshua and the Judges. They were no longer a kingdom with one of their own sons on the throne — the kind of throne that the glory could accompany, as under David and David's sons. The people were now subjects of the Gentile. They depended on the Gentile's permission to live in the land of their fathers, and to keep the laws and do the service of their God.
Being looked down on is not always a bad sign. Commentators separate reproach earned for God's name from reproach earned by inconsistent living.
They were in great affliction. It came out of their own moral condition, and out of the activity and hatred of the enemies who surrounded them. They were also in reproach. It is a blessing when God's people suffer reproach because they are His people, or because of the name of their God (compare 1 Peter 4:14). But nothing is sadder than when the world reproaches the Lord's people, or when they become a reproach to the world, through their inconsistent walk and ways. It would seem, from the end of the book of Ezra, that the reproach in this case was of the second kind. They claimed to be what they really were — God's people — but they denied it by their alliances with the nations around them and by forgetting the claims of their God.
The damage was real history — Nebuchadnezzar's army had done it. But commentators also read the ruins as a picture of what had collapsed inside the community.
That was the plain fact, and Nebuchadnezzar had been the instrument, through his army, that did it. But there is another meaning as well. The wall is the symbol of separation, and, as we have seen, the wall of separation between Israel and the nations around them had been broken down. The gate was the place of judgment, and so the emblem of it. This teaches us that no one was giving justice and fair judgment any more.
Commentators describe the gate a little differently. One reads it as the place of justice, another as the place where God's people watch who comes in.
The wall stands for keeping separate from evil. The gate stands for godly care in receiving people and in discipline. In any age, careless associations and slack discipline among the people of God are sure signs of a low moral condition.
Set this verse beside the book that follows Nehemiah, and the contrast is startling.
The next book, Esther, tells us what happened to the much larger number of Jews who did not care about God's interests in His temple, but chose to stay in the land of their captivity... The people who, despite their faults, had cared for God's interests and rebuilt His temple are marked by affliction and reproach. Meanwhile those who did not care, and stayed in their comfort, have "feasting", "gladness", and "a good day".
Nehemiah had every excuse to write them off. His attachment did not depend on how the remnant was doing.
Nehemiah loved the people of God at the very time when they had lost their rightful claim — when God was disciplining them for their serious faults and sins against Him — at a time when giving them up seemed the most reasonable thing to do. Had not God given them up? Why, then, should Nehemiah feel so much about them?... He knew that only the remnant of that people was left on earth — deeply guilty, and punished with full justice — but still the people of God, the people with whom God's plans of blessing and grace for the earth are bound up.
The news did not move Nehemiah to comment. It moved him to mourning and prayer.
If Nehemiah was so moved by the earthly state of Jerusalem and the affliction of the remnant, how much more should believers mourn and weep over the spiritual state of God's people. Yet how little of this sorrowing spirit do we see today! We need it if we are to humble ourselves and pray effectively.
- Province — Judah was a district of a foreign empire. It served its own God only by a Gentile king's permission.
- Reproach — To be despised for God's name is a blessing. To be despised for inconsistent living is a sorrow.
- Wall — Broken walls picture separation from evil given up. Burned gates picture justice and godly care no longer at work.
- Comfort — Those who cared for God's interests suffered. Those who ignored them feasted. Ease is no measure of God's approval.
- Tears — Nehemiah's love held when the people had lost every claim. The news moved him to mourning and prayer.