Nehemiah4chapter 4

Nehemiah 4:1-3

Sanballat hears that the wall rises and answers with contempt before he answers with force, mocking feeble Jews who cannot finish what they started. Tobiah adds the sharper jab: a fox climbing the stones would break down all they have built. Matthew Henry reads the sequence as the pattern of every threatened enemy, ridicule tried first because it costs nothing and works if it lands. The mockery will harden into conspiracy by verse eight, words giving way to weapons.

Nehemiah 4:4-5

for we are despised: Nehemiah answers no insult directly and instead prays it upward, asking God to turn the reproach back on the men who spoke it. Adam Clarke notes the Hebrew verb form allows a declaratory reading as much as a request, so the prayer may be read as much as prophecy of what their sin will bring as a plea for it. John Wesley reads the plea to not cover their iniquity as a request for present correction rather than a wish for their ruin, a chastening meant to reform or to warn others by their example. The prayer stands as Nehemiah's entire reply to three verses of open mockery, no answer given to the men who spoke it.

Nehemiah 4:6

had a mind to work: The wall reaches half its height, and the narrator gives the reason in five words that occur nowhere else in Scripture: the people had a mind to work. Adam Clarke renders the Hebrew more literally as a heart to work, the engagement of the will behind the labor of the hands. John Gill reads the phrase against the previous three verses of scorn, the builders going on notwithstanding the scoffs and threats because their heart was in it. The mockery has not slowed the wall by a single course.

Nehemiah 4:7-9

Sanballat's coalition widens as Ammonites, Arabians and Ashdodites join him, and mockery becomes conspiracy, an actual plan to come against Jerusalem and stop the work by force. Nehemiah answers with one sentence that names both halves of the answer: we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night. Matthew Henry reads the pairing against Christ's own instruction to watch and pray, prayer without watchfulness a kind of sloth, watchfulness without prayer a kind of pride. Charles Spurgeon preached the verse under the title The Two Guards, prayer and watching set to guard the wall together, neither one sufficient alone.

Nehemiah 4:10-12

The wall's own builders lose heart before the enemy strikes a blow, Judah reporting that the strength of the burden bearers is spent and the rubbish too much to clear. Matthew Henry observes that Nehemiah now has as much trouble managing the fears of his own people as he ever had with the threats outside the camp. The enemy's plan surfaces at the same moment, a plot to come in the midst of the workers unseen and cause the work to cease by killing them, and Jews living nearby bring the warning ten times over. Discouragement and conspiracy arrive together, the two threats the chapter answers as one.

Nehemiah 4:13-15

Nehemiah stations the people by family in the low and exposed places along the wall, armed with swords, spears and bows before an attack ever comes. He answers their fear with a charge built on the same ground as his prayer: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. Adam Clarke notes that every stake a family could name was in that sentence, religion, kin and property named together as the reason to stand. When the enemy learns the plan is known, God is credited with the outcome directly: God had brought their counsel to nought, and the builders return to the wall unmolested.

Nehemiah 4:16-18

From this point half of Nehemiah's men work while the other half stand armed with spears, shields, bows and coats of mail, and the builders themselves work with one hand and hold a weapon in the other, a sword girded at every man's side. Charles Spurgeon took the image for the name of his own magazine, The Sword and the Trowel, work and defense carried together as the shape of every true labor for God. John Wesley reads the weapon as more than literal armament, a proverbial picture of a man who works with one hand while guarding what he loves with the other. A trumpeter stands beside Nehemiah the whole time, ready to call the workers to arms the moment the sound is given.

Nehemiah 4:19-20

The work is too great and the wall too long for every family to defend itself, so Nehemiah gives one sign that will call them together: wherever you hear the trumpet, resort to us there. He grounds the whole plan in one line, the same confidence that answered the enemy's plot two verses earlier: our God shall fight for us. Adam Clarke notes the practical wisdom in it, workers scattered the length of an extensive wall gathered instantly to a single point the moment danger is heard. The trumpet turns a divided workforce into one body without requiring anyone to leave his post until the signal sounds.

Nehemiah 4:21-23

The workday stretches from the rising of the morning until the stars appear, half the men still holding spears through every hour of it. Nehemiah orders every man and servant to lodge inside Jerusalem rather than go home at night, so the same body that builds by day stands guard by night. He includes himself in the discipline he sets for everyone else: neither he, his brethren, his servants, nor the men of his own guard put off their clothes, except to wash. Adam Clarke calls the whole arrangement wise and judicious, a leader who asked nothing of his people that he did not first ask of himself.