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Nehemiah

Nehemiahchapter 6

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Speaks with:Nehemiah 2×3Nehemiah 4×3Nehemiah 13×2Nehemiah 3×2Psalms 37×21 Chronicles 8×1

Summary

Chapter summary

Four times Sanballat and Geshem summon him to the plain of Ono, and four times comes the same answer: 'I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease?' The fifth message arrives as an open letter charging rebellion and a plot to be crowned king; Nehemiah replies that they invent it out of their own heart, and prays, 'Now therefore, O God, strengthen thou my hands.' A hired prophet urges him to hide inside the temple: 'Should such a man as I flee?… I will not go in.' The wall was finished in fifty and two days, and the nations 'perceived that this work was wrought of our God.'

Context

History · Nehemiah — Nehemiah overview

  • A. 1–9 Come meet me in Ono: I am doing a great work and cannot come down
  • B. 10–14 A hired prophet who would have made him sin by hiding
  • C. 15–19 Fifty-two days, and the nations lose their confidence

The outline

  1. A.Come meet me in Ono: I am doing a great work and cannot come downvv. 1 to 9

    Read vv. 1 to 9 →

  2. B.A hired prophet who would have made him sin by hidingvv. 10 to 14

    Read vv. 10 to 14 →

  3. C.Fifty-two days, and the nations lose their confidencevv. 15 to 19

    Read vv. 15 to 19 →

The world behind this chapter

Nehemiah 6
When
The wall finished · 445 BC — completed on the twenty-fifth day of Elul, fifty-two days after the work began
Where
The plain of Ono, a hired prophet's house, and the last gap in the wall
Who first heard it
A leader being worked on personally now that the project could not be stopped

The history

The attacks in this chapter are all aimed at one man. Four invitations to meet in a village on the plain of Ono — neutral ground a day's travel away, out of the city and away from his guards. Then an open letter, deliberately unsealed so anyone could read it, accusing him of building the wall in order to make himself king and hiring prophets to proclaim it. That charge, if it reached Artaxerxes, was the one that had stopped the work before.

Then a hired prophet named Shemaiah tries to get him to hide in the temple with the doors shut. Nehemiah was a layman; entering the sanctuary would have been a public disqualification, which is exactly why he was offered the door. He names the tactic outright: they hired him so that Nehemiah would sin and they would have matter for an evil report.

The chapter also shows how deep the entanglement went. Tobiah had married into a leading Judean family and his son into another, and nobles in Jerusalem were writing to him and reporting Nehemiah's words back.

What it meant to them

The answer he keeps giving to the invitations is the most quoted sentence in the book: "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down."

The wall was finished in fifty-two days, and the effect on the neighbours is recorded precisely: they were cast down in their own eyes, for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God. A fast job is a testimony that a slow one is not.

Sources cited

  • Edwin Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible
  • K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
  • Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation)

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Nehemiah 6. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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