40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Nehemiah 3:1-4:23 (Episode 363)

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Nehemiah assembles work crews all over the city to begin rebuilding the wall and gates of Jerusalem. The people living near them are not happy about this endeavor and first mock it, but later start gathering armed forces. But Nehemiah knows that vengeance belongs to God. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! Show Notes Support the Podcast Network Fundraiser 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube More from the hosts Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

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you'll see that link that says support this show. And you just click that and it'll take you right to that fundraiser. We appreciate it. Chad, we are in Nehemiah chapter three. Nehemiah has been sent out. He's gathering the timbers. He's got some letters. He's going to do some building. Does he have any experience with building? Probably not, but he's going to go and see what can be done to repair what is in disrepair. And there's some guys that were, you know, kind of interested in helping him or maybe wanted to you know a little curious about what's going on and he said hey guess what uh you don't have any part in this and uh we're not gonna have your help we're not going to tell you what we're doing you can just uh keep walking down the road buddy and that uh that was

quite the burn that burn uh is gonna leave a mark yeah yeah these guys gonna come back later and uh well they're gonna jeer and taunt which they've already done but they're gonna they're gonna make some plans to see what they can do to uh at least slow down if not completely destroy this this project that the israelites are engaged in so yeah beginning at beginning of chapter three we're all the way through chapter three we're going to hear about everybody that's involved in the in the process a lot of names and if you if you're familiar with nehemiah 3 and you're thinking is chad can actually read this whole chapter fear not i am not actually we usually do i'm gonna read it surprise oh dan's gonna read that's right you can do all you can do all the the hebrew names

i'm not gonna do that fish gates and sheep gates and dung gates and east gates and yeah we got a lot going on here one thing that's cool about this chapter uh as we're not going to read all of it but kind of summarize um the what you do see is that uh nehemiah is a pretty good uh he might i don't know what he knows about building but he knows about organizing it would appear because you have to assume he's leading this charge and he does somehow rally the troops as it were and he's got different groups of people or different families uh all doing different things so it does seem that he's got some organization going on here of how we can it's not as though like okay the first thing we're going to do is build this thing and so everybody goes over there and you're

working on you know this section of wall or this gate and then everyone moves over there no he's got it divided up and different people groups and different families are working on different things and so you you kind of get this idea that the whole thing's going to rise up together yeah and the impression i get too is that you got you have you have a group cohesion going on and part of what uh builds that cohesion is the fact that they've got a common enemy right they got a common goal. They're going to build a wall, but they also have a common enemy. And we've already heard about them. We're going to hear more about them down the road. In fact, they're going to, they're going to threaten them so much that guys are going to start, they got a hammer in one

hand or a trial in one hand, then they got a sword or a bow in the other hand. So they're going to be carrying weapons while they're also building the wall. So they got group cohesion. They're united in this effort, but they also have a common enemy, which of course is a good glue that holds holds people together and uh you know another aspect of i think nehemiah's leadership and i don't know if he was the mastermind behind this or not but this is the way it played out is you had a you had kind of this common goal but you also had personal investment because several times i noticed when i was reading through all the details in the chapter you know so and so and so and so did the repairs opposite their house so it's the idea that hey you know if you live

say on the the eastern side of jerusalem or the south side or wherever you live we want you to work on the wall that's directly opposite to your house which you know makes perfect sense you know so you're not like going all the way across jerusalem and you're helping this guy build his wall close to his house no it's right there where you live so i mean there's kind of this personal investment idea too i want to make sure that where i live opposite my house the walls the walls in good shape another thing i kind of like about this is uh just kind of from the whole perspective of community is that everybody almost everybody is involved in this you start out uh with chapter three saying that the high priest with his brothers the fellow

priest they're going to build the sheep gate and they're going to consecrate it they're going to set its doors they're going to consecrate a tower a couple of towers and so from the high priest on down you got people involved then later in the chapter you hear about the levites who are involved and one guy i don't know which verse that is uh but one guy his daughters are helping him out too so i was like hey everybody hey kids grab some bricks grab some stones uh you know make a run to home depot and make sure we have plenty of concrete for whatever we're doing here so it i mean it's it's really i mean despite the fact that um robert alter describes this as one the most boring chapters in the bible and granted it's not like intellectually stimulating uh but

still it is it's pretty fascinating when you kind of step back and you and you view kind of the big picture what's going on here i mean come on you get a whole city involved in something like this that's pretty that's pretty impressive and i'm with you i think it probably stems mainly from nehemiah's leadership yeah he was a cupbearer to the king but you kind of get the impression that this guy, he wasn't just somebody who knew his wines. You know, he also, he probably from all those years of serving in the King's court, he picked up on a lot about how leadership works, how organization works, how, uh, community works. And he was in, you know, used by God. That's the reason God, uh, chose and used Nehemiah for this because he had the, he had the skills necessary

to pull this off. So we kind of move in a counterclockwise fashion around the city of Jerusalem as each of these sections of the wall and gates are described. And there's a ton of gates. You got Sheep Gate, Fish Gate, Gate of Yeshanah, Valley Gate, Dung Gate, Water Gate, East Gate, Muster Gate. And most of these, I mean, some of these, you know, archaeologists and historians have been able to kind of pinpoint some of these, who knows, you know, but as it is with with all ancient cities that had walls you don't have just one gate i mean you have other places where you have a chance for people to to enter and to exit in fact so um my wife and i just got back a few days ago from a uh trip to greece and we visited several of the greek greek islands and

we were we were in rhodes and we did a medieval walking tour and part of that city still has the medieval walls it was kind of cool i was thinking about that trip and nehemiah 3 because when you walked along you had like oh here's a gate you go another quarter mile here's a gate another quarter mile there's a gate these are i mean this is super thick walls super impressive gates i mean that's just one example of course that's for the middle ages but kind of this this way of building thick walls and having gates here and there for various reasons i mean that continued all the way from uh the days of nehemiah up until the to the middle ages yeah well you got to have lots anyway You got to have lots of gates because, you know, if you have one way in, that means you only have one way out, which is not good.

And if you go to Jerusalem today and you drive around, you can see the remains, not of these gates because these are underneath the surface now. But there were still gates in the old city walls that you can tell were there for various reasons. And so, I mean, it's speculation to some extent, but probably the sheep gate, because it's connected here with the priest, I'm guessing, was where the sheep were brought in that were used for sacrifice. Yeah, it kind of makes sense. So Elisha, the high priest, rose up with his brothers, the priests, and they built the sheep gate and they consecrated it.

And interestingly, I looked at the rest of the chapter. These are the only gates that are consecrated. So it kind of makes sense that this would have been in connection with the temple. so they consecrate that in the tower and so the guys from jericho were also building and that makes sense too because we know at least from from later evidence that a lot of the priest lived in jericho of course that i mean that jives with uh the parable of the good samaritan the priest is heading down from his service of the temple to jericho because well that's where a lot of the where a lot of the priests lived so anyway we start out there with with those those guys and

then pretty soon uh verse four we have mention of repair uh azak in hebrew and i think if my memory serves me here 34 times that verb is used in uh in this chapter it's of course it's a major theme then you have sometimes you have no doubt starting from scratch but most of the time you have repairs going on they're repairing gates repairing walls and later on we'll hear about they got it kind of halfway done the wall is built halfway up so anyway a lot of repairs going on a lot of building going on and most everybody involved there is a there is one one group here who uh as the ESV has it would not stoop to serve the Lord so he has some guys from Tekoa the Tekoiites which was just a little ways there from about uh I don't know a few miles from Jerusalem

so some of them the chicoites did work but their nobles would not stoop to serve the lord literally in hebrew they would not put their necks the idea of kind of putting their your neck in a yoke in order to serve so i don't know what these guys problem was maybe they thought they were too good for that uh we'll let everybody else take care of that yeah nobles here is probably just like you know sort of like you know the upperclassmen of that particular group right uh And we're like, oh, it's great that you're repairing the walls, but I mean I'm not going to – obviously I'm not going to get dirty or break a sweat. I'll send some people. Yeah, right.

But it does seem, you know, the one thing that you could take away from this is that it tells you that these people weren't, which makes you assume that all the other sort of people of higher class or whoever they are, the leaders of different groups, that they were, because it's only mentioned that these ones didn't. So you have to assume the rest of them did. Yeah, yeah. In fact, you go down to verse 12, it says that next to him, Shalom, the son of Helosha, the ruler of half the district of Jerusalem repaired. He and his daughter. So he's the one who had his daughters involved helping out.

Maybe he didn't have any sons, and so he put his daughters to work. But either way, I mean, he's a leader. He's a noble there in Jerusalem, ruler of half the district of Jerusalem. So he's out there working. Everybody kind of, you know, they get their trowel. They get whatever else they needed, and they go to work because the wall has to be built. and uh united as they were they're able to actually make some some great progress and

set the set the gates and the doors the bolts the bars of the gates and they're making a pretty good pretty good progress and i know that that's basically the summary of the chapter i don't know if there's anything else that we need to we need to add about it if you're really into details well then you can check it out uh all the names all the places all the gates uh and kind of where everybody was located opposite their house doing the repairs necessary to get it all put back together before they had some more trouble with these guys that we're going to hear about at the beginning of chapter four. I suppose if you're looking for a good biblical name, you could read through this chapter. Maybe you're pregnant or your wife's pregnant, and you're like,

I want a name that no one else has. You want that real, original, yet biblical name. You don't want to go with john or matthew you want to do that you know you want but you want benui yeah benui yeah you can get one of these guys and uh you know i mean how about this i mean you could name your kid you know uh you know shallum and then people are like hey what that's a weird name yeah this is a noble guy that does work you know i mean what what a great biblical flex that you could have i can't remember the example but one of the commenters that i was reading said that some of these seem to be nicknames and i wish i could remember the the instance of one of these guys uh and literally in hebrew it's it's uh pug nose so he gives names so maybe you want to check

a hebrew dictionary before you you chose the some of these names but yeah there's some pretty good pretty good names there you know and this is totally off subject but you know you know a name a biblical name we need to recover more is abraham yeah i mean do you know anybody do you know anybody named abraham uh personally i only i actually do not i know uh you know our good friend noah yeah uh his uh his middle name is abraham i do know that oh nice night two wow i'm man noah just rose even higher in my abraham yeah this guy yeah two not only not just two Old Testament names, but two Genesis, two Torah names.

Yeah. Guess if this guy was raised in church or not. Yeah, take a wild guess on that one. Yeah. So, anyway, if you're looking for names, looking for details, looking for how to provide a little bit of

leadership and group cohesion to a task, well, here you go. Nehemiah 3 is all about that. Yep. So, anyway, that's that chapter. we'll we'll jump into chapter four now and we're going to hear about our friend uh sand ballot or a sun ballot or however you want to say his name the one that we heard about at the beginning of the podcast the one who wasn't uh wasn't so happy about uh rejection so uh we uh we hear that he

he gets word that uh the work on the wall is proceeding and he's not very happy about this in fact uh he was angry not as angry but greatly enraged so just in case you didn't get the point it wasn't just mad he wasn't just angry this dude is like greatly enraged over this presumably because we talked about this guy before presumably because you know up until nehemiah's arrival uh this guy is able to kind of control things you know even if he's not the ruler of jerusalem yeah he's got his thumb in the pie and he's able to kind of control things and then this this uh cup bearer that nobody's ever heard of shows up and uh does this little reconnaissance trip middle of the night checking things out and then gets everybody uh uh worked

up and and eager to to work to rebuild the wall the next thing you know this thing is halfway built so he is not happy about the progress and so his response is to uh jeer at the jews so he's going to start out with some verbal attacks here he's probably he's probably a little nervous to do like anything more than jeer at least initially like i mean this is sort of like a uh a authorized endeavor right and nehemiah made sure that he had the paperwork in order yeah yeah it's not as if nehemiah just you know gets this idea this harebrained idea and uh you know gets on his horse and and travels all the way from from babylon to uh to jerusalem this is hey guys i have this idea that we should do this no he's got documentation

he's got authorization uh straight from the king yeah i think i think if he doesn't have that this is a it was much more difficult to accomplish without people trying to stop you from doing it oh yeah they would have they would have shut this down shut this down immediately and well in fact they they they did shut down as we talked about in one of the earlier podcasts uh they sent letters earlier to the king saying hey you know you really ought to check out these jews because there's a long history of them being rebels and they had some great leaders in the past and the last thing that you want is for them to become strong again so it would be our recommendation that all building in the city stop and the king's like yeah yeah a little research and yeah that's probably the best

so anyway um he's he's greatly raged cheers to the jews and then he's gonna he's gonna talk to his buddies he says in the presence of his brothers and of the army of samaria he's got these five uh rhetorical questions what are these feeble jews doing will they restore it for themselves will they sacrifice will they finish in a day will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and the burn ones at that so uh he starts out kind of i don't know i kind of get the impression he's just trying to uh rally the troops here and uh bent a little bit his his frustration and make it sound as if this is never going anywhere but all the while you know kind of beneath the surface there you can tell he's he's nervous because obviously they are making progress

even if they have just heaps of rubbish, stones that have been partially burned, which is going to weaken the stones if they get that hot. But hey, the work is proceeding. This definitely seems like you're mocking something

but you're obviously frustrated. When you try to act like you're brushing something off but you can't stop talking about it so people know that you're actually a little bit obsessed with it. Yeah, you protest too much. yeah like you're like oh i don't care about that it's nothing but like it's all you talk about day and night but that's all you can talk about all the time so obviously you are pretty

concerned about it yeah yeah so and then uh after after sand violet uh finishes his little five question jeer uh tobiah the ammonite well he's he's got a few choice words to say too he jumps in and he says yeah what are they building if even a if even a fox you know a little a little canine this could be translated jackal too if a fox or a jackal goes up on it then the the stone wall is going to break down so a little hyperbole going on there too you know if my dog jumped on that wall it would fall down these guys don't have any idea what they're doing that that is there's no way this is going anywhere so san valentino they both uh are are trying maybe they're trying to convince themselves or they're trying to convince other people that this is a

a lost cause. So, I mean, this is, this is happening. We, we, we find out in a couple more verses, this is overheard as it were. It's good because this is uttered in the presence of the builders. So you kind of get the impression that, you know, they're hanging around, they're jeering, they're making these, uh, uh, these accusations and these asking these questions and people hear this, you know, the rumor mills going on that, Hey, that's what's being said about this so how's nehemiah going to respond well you know i we said early on uh that when we started covering this book that we you get a much you get a much more well-rounded picture of nehemiah than you do ezra it's kind of what person kind of person he is and i think we're going to see a

little bit more here too because listen to this prayer from nehemiah nehemiah is just he's he's pretty he's a pretty straight shooter he says uh well he doesn't he doesn't speak to them here's this is the prayer that uh that he utters here oh our god for we are despised turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives do not cover their guilt and let not this their sin be blotted out from your sight for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders that sounds like that's straight that that's like that's some that's an imprecatory psalms language there is what that is it definitely is i mean i mean there's a lot of things that you could

uh pray you know maybe against your enemies so i mean you know you know hey god we're being despised here uh turn back these words you know these taunts on their own heads uh you're like okay like that's that's that's pretty that's understandable like okay what you say is going to come back to bite you but they did not stop there and to say also give them a little taste of what we've had uh maybe give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives now this sounds like something that nehemiah is saying uh hey but you know what was done to us maybe do that to them you know like maybe maybe they can get a little uh give them a little education on uh where we what where we came from what we've been dealing with as you're like well

that's pretty rough. And then this is the worst thing, not like worse isn't sinful, but like the harshest thing that you could possibly pray against somebody else is to say, do not cover their guilt and let not their sins be blotted from your sight. Now this is the harshest of all things that you could pray for. Yeah, there's, I don't know of anything worse than that. No, that's as bad as it gets dude like yes i mean this is this is typical imprecatory psalm language uh well once we start covering the psalms we'll we'll get to we'll get to some of those there's a bunch of them yeah uh psalm 109 for instance uh which is quoted in reference later in the new testament is quoted in reference to judas iscariot yeah that's some uh that's some pretty pretty rough language i think

it's i mean there's i think it's interesting too that he uses this uh provoked language because we had talked about this you know as israel was being led into exile and captive and stuff we talked about all this provocation right that like god had been long provoked uh and had stated that he was being provoked over and these people are provoking me like this is the proverbial stick and bear. This stick is constantly in my face and in my ribcage, and this is going on for a long time. And Nehemiah uses this same kind of language that is sort of calling on God to be fair. Like, hey, when we provoked you, this is what happened, this whole being plundered and captive and this kind of thing. And he makes the statement, for they have provoked you. Now,

this isn't God saying that these people are provoked, but Nehemiah saying that God should be provoked. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So take a listen, God, to what's being said by these people. It's kind of like when we were, that was 2 Kings, where you have Hezekiah taking the letter that they sent and basically spreading it out before God and saying, hey, read this.

Yeah. Have a listen to what these guys are saying about you and about our people and do something about it. And he did, you know? He had a whole lot of Assyrians being killed. I think it's also interesting that these taunts and jeers aren't actually saying anything really about their God. I mean, it's mostly just mocking the people,

but Nehemiah knows that the work that he's doing is the Lord's work, and so to mock the work is to mock the Lord. I think this is kind of the argument that Nehemiah is making in his prayer because he's like, hey, they're provoking you by saying that we can't do this thing or that everything that we're trying to do will fail. So this is actually a mocking of you because, of course, this is your work. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just like, you know, if you or I overheard some dude talking trash about our wives, we wouldn't say, oh, well, that doesn't concern me because he's not talking about me.

yeah of course he's just he's talking about me because he's talking about you're talking about my spouse so you uh you trash talk israel you know you you do all these things against the people of god well you're you're dealing with god himself it's you know it's just it's what uh it's what christ said to to saul on the way to damascus saul saul why are you persecuting me yeah you know you uh you deal harshly with my people well you're doing you're doing harshly with me that's right so uh we got we get the prayer uh nehemiah just kind of throws that prayer up to god and knows that uh he's going to be heard he's he kind of i mean that's one of the things i actually like about the imprecatory psalms is it's a chance to verbalize this this

frustration uh with all of the the terrible things that are happening and then you basically like hand that to god and say here you deal with it yeah you know i'm not going to go take the measures into my own hands. I'm going to let you know that I know what's going on, and then I'm going to let you, as the judge, take care of the situation. Yeah, this is some vengeance belongs to God kind of thing. Yes, exactly. So that is the biblical way. You don't take it into your own hands. You inform God of it, and then hand it over to Him, and then you, well, you'll see here, then you continue with your work and you let him vengeance belongs to god and i think that's one of the one of the great lessons to learn from the imprecatory psalms is that we were all going to

be angry about injustice as we should be you know so what do you do about it well you know unless it's your vocation to deal with it you simply pray psalms like this and then you turn things over to the lord and say well you've said vengeance is mine i will repay so there you go i'm gonna let you be god and i'm gonna be be who i am yep and then like you say i'm gonna go about the labor that you've given to me and i'm not gonna let this stop me so that's what they did verse six and it goes right on and says so we built the wall it didn't slow down and all the wall was joined together to half its height for the people had a mind to work so i'm making making good progress uh they're they're halfway

there verse 7 says but when our two friends here sanballat and tobiah and the arabs whoever those were i mean we're not told much about them some some people think that this this might have been an early name for the uh the idumeans which lived in the the place of edom so perhaps that's that's who we're talking about here and then we have reference to the ammonites and those guys would have been the ones who lived east of the jordan and then another group thrown in here the ashdodites so they're from ashdod and that was part that was one of the cities in the philistine pentapolis pentapolis evidently when the uh the assyrians kind of took over they changed the name of that province to ashdod and then that was adopted by by the persians so anyway two individuals

sanballat and tobiah along with the arabs and the ammonites and the ashdodites all these guys heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and the breaches were beginning to be closed. So predictably, they were very angry. A lot of anger going on here if you haven't picked up on that already.

Now, earlier they were just basically engaging in verbal abuse. Yeah, this wall is going to fall down if a fox jumps on it. What do you think? You're going to finish this wall? It's never going to happen. So they

they shift from that to actually making plans to use military force in order to put a stop to this so they were very angry and verse 8 they all plotted together to come and fight against jerusalem and to cause confusion in it so they're they're plotting it's kind of a psalm 2 kind of deal you know why do the nations uh you know plotting in vain they're enraged against god so that's what these guys are doing so verse 9 says we prayed to our god and set a guard as a protection against them day and night so the the tension is rising here you know it began with just kind of this these verbal assaults now we have plotting to engage in some sort of some sort of violence against the city to make sure that this thing doesn't go anywhere and so nemi they

They respond by, number one, praying, which is always a good thing. And number two, setting a guard as protection against them day and night. So, you know, pray to God that you're going to be safe in your house, but lock the door too. Right? That's kind of the idea here. Yes. Don't simply pray and say, oh, well, God's going to take care of me. Make sure that you're responsible for doing those things that you can do to make sure that you're going to be safe.

now verse 10 shifts and says in judah it was said the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing there's too much rubble by ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall so that's what is being said in judah we'll come back to that verse 11 says our enemy said they will not know or see till we come along among them and kill them and stop the work there's one way to stop the work that yeah that'll stop it i would put a stop to the work right away but verse 10 this uh i don't know it's sort of a uh like this is the this is the the mumbling the the rumors the the complaints that are going on in judy you certainly get the impression that maybe morale is beginning to slip here a little bit the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing there's all this

rubble that we're having to work with and by ourselves are not gonna be able to rebuild the wall. So maybe some of this jeering and taunting going on from Sanballat and Tobiah and the others is beginning to actually weaken the resolve of the builders, because this is the kind of the talk that's going on. And then the enemies, yeah, they're like, well, we're going to take care of this. We're going to kill them. That'll stop the work. Verse 12 is a little bit ambiguous because the Hebrew there, according to every single commentary that I've looked at, everybody agrees that they're not exactly sure what to do with some of the Hebrew. I'll just read you what the ESV has. At that time, the Jews

who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, you must return to us. I'm not sure what to do with that. I think it's probably just simply part of this whole fear that the work is not going to happen, and

that the enemies are going to be able to actually stop the wall building. But anyway, the overall impression is you've got the enemies plotting, you've got them making plans, and you've got maybe a weakening of morale, and fears about what's going to happen among the people of Judah. So why does Nehemiah respond?

Verse 13 says, So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall in open places, I stationed people by their clans with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome. and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. It's not brought out in any translation, but there's a kind of a word play here going on.

It says, don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who is great and fearsome would be a better translation of that. I mean, awesome is fine, but it's the same verbal root for afraid as well as for awesome. So it's the idea of, listen, these guys, Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ashdodites, and everybody else who's throwing shade on us and threatening and plotting, don't be afraid of them. Instead, if you're going to direct your fear anywhere, direct it in a healthy sort of way to the fearsome God who is great and who has a long proven track record of coming to his people's aid when they're threatened by their enemies, and acting in such a way, either overtly or covertly, to stop the enemies from subverting the work that's being done. So don't fear them, fear God.

And when we say fear God, we mean believe in Him, hope in Him, trust in Him, worship Him, treat Him as one who is fearsome. Yeah, I like the idea of remembering the Lord, who is great and fearsome, but fighting for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your home. So one thing that sometimes people do is think that the Lord needs you to do something for Him or to fight for Him. So back in the medieval times, you might say you're fighting for Christendom or fighting for God or fighting for righteousness, but none of that stuff is true and the truth is is that you remember god and then you fight for the things that he's put uh into your life you fight for the things the people that he's made you

responsible for your neighbors and your family and you remember that it's the lord who fights for you you don't have to fight for him you you fight for other things you fight for those you're responsible for you fight for uh the people that you love uh and you remember that the lord who doesn't need you to fight for him. He doesn't need anything from you. He actually is on your side. Yeah, God doesn't need us to step into the ring for him. He's perfectly capable to take care of that himself.

But, you know, our brothers, our sons, our daughters, our wives, yeah, they need us to step up and be faithful in our vocation of serving them. So remember the Lord. He's going to take care of you. And then you, you take care of those who are around you. so verse 15 says uh when our enemies heard that it was known to us and that so that when the enemies found out that the israelites had found out their their plots and that god had frustrated their plan we all returned to the wall each to his work and from that day on half of my servants

so this is nehemiah speaking from that day on half of my servants worked on construction and then half held the spears the shields the bows and the coats of coats of mail so they're they're uh continuing preparations uh the continuing repairs of the wall but they're also at the same time making sure that there's a guard set up so i mean they're again they're being they're being uh faithful but they're also being practical they're believing they're worshiping they're trusting they're praying but they're also being faithful in the vocation to which god to call them and that god had frustrated their plan that is that's pretty typical language we have a lot of other places in scripture for what the way that god works for for knowing what

the enemies are doing for knowing how they're plotting against him and in his own divine sort of way frustrating those plans from coming to their coming to their fulfillment so the leaders stood behind the whole house of judah who were building the wall and those who those who carried the burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other that had to have been so hard by the way i feel like this is uh this is more i uh i i don't know how literally you want to take this uh but i do think this probably means that uh everyone's got you know a sword or whatever and and the idea here is that you know the saying uh you know sleep with one eye one eye open that this is uh work with one hand on your

sword it's that kind of thing yeah you are aware you're aware of what's going on yes absolutely yeah in fact it goes on to say that uh each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while they built and then they got a nemi had a guy with a shofar with a with a ram's horn beside him ready to to signal you know should there should there come an attack and he says to the nobles and the officials and the rest of the people listen we're spread out everywhere this there's a lot of work to be done we're spread out everywhere we're separated on the wall here and there so if the enemies do attack then my guy with a shofar is going to blow it and when you hear that we'll then rally around us there and then he's got this great line our god will fight for us

there it is so you know who's fighting for who yeah i mean this is this is typical language lifted from the Torah, for instance, you know, at the Red Sea and other places where God basically says, hey, listen, it's all going to be okay because I'm fighting for you. I'm your warrior, I'm your protector, and I'm going to step up and do what needs to be, what needs to be done. And just kind of, I think we can just wrap this up in over 40 minutes, but we only got two verses left. So Nehemiah says, we labored at the work and, you know, got these guys holding spears in

the break of dawn till the stars come out and he has everybody kind of spend the night in jerusalem he says let every man every servant pass the night in jerusalem that they can be a guard for us by night and may labor during the day and so that's what they did they and even when they went to bed they kept their clothes on kept the weapon at their right hand ready to to rise and to fight if need be and if nothing happened when they get up in the morning they go to they go to work so So they're making progress, even though they've been hampered by threats and by possible attacks. They took measures, and they kept on going through the work that they needed to do to get the wall built. Yeah, nobody's getting in their pajamas during this thing.

You sleep in your clothes with your sword in its sheath attached to your body. That's how this is going to go. Yeah, it's a pretty serious time in Israel. Well, all right. Yeah, that is it. That is Chapter 4. We will be back next episode with Chapter 5, and Nehemiah is going to have to, you know,

he's not going to fight physical battles. He's going to have to fight some other battles that are going on. Yeah, probably he's at home now amongst the Israelites. Yeah, what do you know? Immediately a problem has to be addressed internally. We've got an internal problem here, and Nehemiah is going to address that. We will check that out next week. Hey, make sure you go down to the show notes, click that link, and support the Podcast Network fundraiser so we can keep all this stuff going.

We greatly appreciate it. Chad, I will see you next week. All right. See you then.