Deeper Commentary
Nehemiah 5:1 Then there arose a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brothers the Jews-
The account of the building and completion of the wall in Neh. 3 is a summary statement. The following chapters now go back to all the dramas that went on during that period. There was a famine at the time, which Haggai says was because of God's anger with the peoples' apostacy. The nobles and leaders mentioned as wall builders in Neh. 3 were in fact abusing their brethren at the time this work was going on; and now Neh. 5 explains the details. It is hard to think that Nehemiah was unaware of the abuses by the nobles whilst the same nobles were rebuilding the wall. Back in Persia, he was aware that the Jewish people of the land "were in great affliction and reproach" (Neh. 1:3). We wonder whether even looking back, Nehemiah is still imagining that these abuses only came to his attention after the work was done. Hence he says "Then there arose a great cry...".
"And their wives" is added perhaps because these were women from the people of the land whom Ezra had branded as Gentiles. But the record says that the "Jews", those who had returned from exile, were indeed their brethren. And Nehemiah confirms this by telling the richer Jews that these poorer Jews [including the wives] were indeed their brothers / relatives (:8). "The people", Heb, am, is the term used for the "people of the land" whom the golah Jews [those who had returned from exile] had intermarried. And Ezra had forced them to divorce on pain of losing their lands, wrongly considering them to be not true Jews. Now we read of another attempt to get their lands from them. The Jews with money were surely those who had returned from the exile in Babylon / Persia, who had been given huge amounts of wealth by the other Jews and also the authorities. The "people of the land" were poor. But they had houses, vineyards and land which were significant enough to have been taken as collateral for debt (:3,4). We are specifically told that these people were given vineyards and land by the Babylonians: "Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left of the poor of the people, who had nothing, in the land of Judah, and gave them vineyards and fields at the same time" (Jer. 39:10). The lenders of money in order to buy food in the famine were clearly the golah Jews. And again, as with Ezra's device, the aim was for them to get the land off the Jews of the land who had remained, the poorest of the poor, to whom the Babylonians had given lands and vineyards. It was exactly the abuse of these Jews which had broken Nehemiah's heart when he heard of it, and he had been moved to begin his project of going to Judah to try to help them. We reflect that the much lauded building of the wall went on with all this background noise. On one hand, we congratulate Nehemiah for his achievement. On the other, we see that apparent zeal and achievement for God don't mean He is pleased with the workers. For according to Haggai, the famine at the time was sent exactly because they valued their own houses above the house of God.
As
in Acts 5:1, there is an intentional anticlimax here. The amazing work of
God through the hands of His people in Neh. 4 is now contrasted with the
fact of the apostasy and weakness of His people. Ez.
45:9 had commanded: “Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel: remove
violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your
exactions from my people”. Nehemiah 5 records that Judah did the very
opposite, and Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi all record social injustice as
being the order of the day at the time of the restoration. A "great cry of
the people" is the phrase used of the cry of the Egyptians when their
families were destroyed by the Passover Angel (Ex. 11:6; 12:30). Israel in
their apostasy were acting like the Egyptians. See on :2.
Nehemiah 5:2 For there were some that said, We, our sons and our daughters,
are many. Let us get grain, that we may eat and live-
The restoration prophecies spoke of Zion multiplying with children. They indeed had "many" children, but they were having to sell them into slavery and couldn't feed them. The point is being made that the prophesied restoration wasn't at all going to plan. There was so much wasted potential. And that is indeed something a man notes in his memoirs, and so it is psychologically credible that Nehemiah does too.
This continues the allusion to the Egyptians noted on :1; for these were the words of the Egyptians during the famine at the time of Joseph. They were being judged like the Egyptians because their hearts were like those of the Egyptians, and they had neglected that great salvation potentially possible.
The withholding of agricultural blessing occurred several times- in Neh. 5:2,3 (as prophesied in Is. 51:19), in Haggai’s time, and later in Malachi 3:10,12; when the restored Zion could have been as the garden of Eden, i.e. paradise restored on earth (Is. 51:3). Here we see frightening similarities with ourselves. We know, but often don’t do. We sense this cycle of failure, crying out for mercy, receiving it, failing again, crying for mercy, receiving it, failing again...we see it in Israel, in our brethren and those around us, and in ourselves. We can expound it, lament it, feel the shame and tragedy of it all...and yet continue to have a part in it. Eventually, the people stayed in this groove so long that they degenerated into how they were at the time of Malachi- self-righteous, with no sense of failure any more, living self-centered lives of petty materialism, earning wages as they did in Haggai’s time, to put into pockets with holes in, life without satisfaction, achieving nothing, passively angry. This is what Malachi clearly portrays. It’s a terrible picture, and one which we can sail dangerously close to identifying with.
Nehemiah 5:3 Some also there were that said, We are mortgaging our fields,
our vineyards and our houses. Let us get grain, because of the famine-
The
princes were to give the rest of the land to the people of Israel (Ez.
45:8). But they made their poor brethren mortgage it to them so that
effectively they took it for themselves. It was exactly this kind of abuse
which had brought about the captivity in the first place (Jer. 34).
Jer.
31:12,13 had promised great fertility at the restoration: “Therefore they
shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the
goodness of the LORD, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the
young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered
garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all". But
the wheat, wine and oil were all withheld by Yahweh as a result of their
selfish materialism, according to Haggai and Malachi. And there was a
“famine” even in Nehemiah’s time.
Nehemiah 5:4 There were also some who said, We have borrowed money for the
king’s tribute using our fields and our vineyards as collateral- This
money was presumably borrowed from their fellow Jews.
Those who lent them the money had totally failed to
appreciate the grace of their salvation, and the response thereby expected
from them. Jeremiah especially reveals the grace which God was
so eager to show to the exiles. Jer. 7:3-7 made it clear that Judah’s
return to the land was to be conditional upon them not oppressing the
poor- only “then will I cause you to dwell in this place”. Yet in
His grace and zeal for His people, it seems God overlooked that condition-
for the returned exiles did oppress (Neh. 5:1-5), and yet they
returned to the land. And yet they would’ve dwelt in Zion “for ever and
ever” (Jer. 7:7) if they had not been abusive to others and truly loved
God.
Nehemiah 5:5 Yet our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children as
their children-
Their argument may have been that they were as ethnically Jewish as their brethren who were abusing them. The Jews who had returned from exile considered the Jews who had remained in the land after the exile as somehow not the true Israel. And they were abusing them because of it. Rashi: "like their children are our children Like their children, who are esteemed and distinguished, so are our children distinguished". Or the idea could be that despite all this sacrifice, they looked as emaciated from famine as those who had nothing to mortgage. They were the middle class, who owned fields and vineyards (:4); and they were now as the lowest classes.
Indeed, we have to bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants- I suggested on Neh. 4 that the large number of "servants" of the builders may refer to these people. On one hand the Spirit of God was working with them, and they showed faith. But their spirituality was of a collective rather than personal nature, as can so easily happen in the church today. For they were abusing their brethren in their own personal lives.
Some of our daughters have already been brought into bondage. Neither is it in our power to get out of it; for other men have our fields and our vineyards- Instead of subduing the nations around them with the victory of Israel’s God, they brought their own brethren into subjection / bondage unto them, that they might gain out of them (Zech. 9:15 s.w. Neh. 5:5). It could’ve been the Kingdom, Israel could have become the joy of the whole earth and her people a joy. But instead, they were obsessed with their petty, miserable little kingdoms, and the next few centuries had nothing of the joy which Isaiah had repeatedly prophesied as being possible for them.
The
princes in the restored kingdom of God were not to oppress the people
(Ez. 45:8); “Moreover the prince shall not take of the people's
inheritance by oppression, to thrust them out of their possession”
(Ez. 46:18). But they did (Neh. 5:1-5; Zech. 7:10; Mal. 3:5).
Nehemiah 5:6 I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words-
The same words are used of Yahweh being angry with Israel when He heard
their cry in Num. 11:1,10. The idea is that this was a very great
apostasy, worthy of returning them to captivity, as God's anger likewise
considered returning Israel to Egypt. For as noted on :1,2, they were
acting as Egypt, oppressing their brethren in slavery and bondage.
Nehemiah 5:7 Then I considered the matter- AV is more accurate:
"consulted with myself". We expect him to consult with God or with
God's word. Possibly now in his memoirs he is realizing, as we all must
do, looking back, that he had advised himself in his self talk- rather
than seeking God's guidance. Perhaps the idea is that he first examined
himself, as to whether he himself had done anything like this, before
contending with his brethren. A necessary example and principle. This is
why he can present himself as an example of how the poorer brethren should
have been treated (:10). But see on :10.
Then contended with the nobles and the rulers and said to them, You exact usury, each one from his brother. I held a great assembly against them- This 'contention' with his weak brethren amongst the leadership was how the book ends (s.w. Neh. 13:11,17,25). It was as if circumstances repeated; his experience of contention with his brethren in Neh. 5:7 was to prepare him for the major contentions of Neh. 13:11,17,25. We pass through one experience to prepare us for another. Nehemiah stresses that these poor Jews, the people of the land, were the "brothers" of the rich Jews who had returned from Persia / Babylon. Nehemiah is holding true to his initial concern for these poor Jews, even though in other ways he doesn't consistently uphold that concern. The golah, the Jews who had returned, were treating the Jews who had remained after the exile as Gentiles; for a Jew could lend on usury to a Gentile, but not to a fellow Jew. Ezra had treated those non-golah Jews likewise, as Gentiles. There can be no two-tier system within the body of believers, and that is a huge challenge in church life. There is plenty of evidence that taking usury in a wrong way, i.e. from fellow Jews, was common amongst the exiles (Ps. 15:5; 37:26; Ez. 18:8,13,17; 22:12). And they continued their wrong behaviour when they arrived in Judah, just as they continued their idolatry. The Mosaic system of sabbath and jubilee years was intended to mitigate the damage caused by usury and indebtedness. Ezra had either totally failed to teach this, or had failed to enforce it. We note later in Nehemiah that the people appeared ignorant even of the feast of Tabernacles. Nehemiah's later appeals to tenuous interpretations of Mosaic law in order to excommunicate the "mixed multitude" appear inconsistent, when basic Mosaic teaching was being ignored. Both in spirit and letter. I discuss on Neh. 5:14 how Persian taxation rates had risen to about 50%. The famine meant they had borrowed money from the wealthy Jews and they were charging abusive interest rates. And yet Mal. 3:8-11 says that the famine at the time was because the Jews hadn't paid a tithe to the priests: "You rob Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’. In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with the curse... Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this, says Yahweh of Armies, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough for. I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast its fruit before its time in the field". The temptation to not give that 10% tithe was strong. Seeing they were being so heavily taxed by the Persians, with Nehemiah as the governor being the chief tax collector. But because they didn't put God first, the drought came and they had collapsed into this unbearable situation.
Nehemiah 5:8 I said to them, We, as much as we could, have redeemed our
brothers the Jews that were sold to the nations-
This may mean that Nehemiah had bought [s.w. "redeemed"] the poor
Jews who sold themselves into slavery in order to pay their debts to the
rich golah Jews. Nehemiah ‘came up’ from Babylon, and was “the servant” who ‘prospered’
Yahweh’s work (Neh. 1:11; 2:20), just as the servant prophecies required
(Is. 53:10; 48:15); and he was thereby the redeemer of his brethren. And
yet it could be that he paid personally to redeem his brothers who had
been sold to local Samaritans ["the nations"].
Would you really sell your brothers, and should they be sold to us? Then they held their peace, and found never a word to answer- Putting our brethren in impossible situations from which they need redemption is to act as the Gentile world; rather than as those who have also been redeemed. The restoration prophets had spoken of all those who left Babylon as being redeemed; but the leadership of the exiles had failed to appreciate this.
There could be the implication in the Hebrew of Neh. 1:3 that the
majority of those who initially returned to Judah then returned back to
Babylon- for Nehemiah speaks of "The remnant that are left of the captives
there in the province" [of Judah]". We shouldn’t underestimate the
seriousness of the famine conditions in Judah as described in Neh. 5. The
sheer lack of food led the Jews to sell their children and land to their
richer brethren just to get something to eat. Mal. 3:5-15 says that this
was directly a result of their lack of zeal to rebuild and care for God’s
house. What a far cry from the prophecies of plenty and huge harvests
which had been made. So much potential was wasted. Neh. 5:8 records
Nehemiah’s comment that the wealthy Jews were victimizing the poorer Jews
just as Babylon once had, and now Nehemiah needed to redeem them from
slavery just as God had redeemed His people from servitude in Babylon.
God’s deliverance of His people simply hadn’t been responded to.
Tragically, it would appear from Neh. 5:15 that Zerubbabel, the potential
Messiah of Israel, had acted in this oppressive way too.
Nehemiah 5:9 Also I said, The thing that you do is not good- A verbatim
quotation of Ex. 18:17, but apparently out of context. But this kind of
thing is to be expected in the language of a person whose mind is full of
God's word; turns of phrase come to mind from the Bible even in our own
language usage, even if not completely in context.
Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God- The allusion is to Dt. 10:12; they were to fear God by walking in His ways. And His ways had been those of redemption by grace, and not of abuse. The fear of God therefore requires us to be just, as He is just and yet also the God of salvation by grace (Gen. 20:11; 2 Sam. 23:3).
Because of the reproach of the nations our enemies?- I suggest this isn't saying that they should fear what others might say about this. Rather is the idea ‘on account of the reproach wherewith our enemies have reproached us'. They should have ever remembered their abuse at the hands of the Gentiles, and so never have done this to their own brethren. They were to break the cycle whereby the abused abuses.
Nehemiah 5:10 For this reason, I my brothers and my servants lend them money
and grain- Again, Nehemiah led by example. He lent money and grain
without demanding collateral nor interest. And he presents himself as an
example.
Please let us stop this usury- The RV suggests Nehemiah himself had been guilty: "And I likewise, my brethren and my servants do lend them money and corn on usury". This would explain why he pauses to look into his own heart before addressing the issue (:7). Hence the force of "let us stop". But in this case we would rather expect a note in :11 to the effect that Nehemiah personally put this right.
Nehemiah 5:11 Please restore to them, even this day, their fields, their
vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses, also the hundredth part of
the money, and of the grain, the new wine, and the oil, that you are
charging them-
"Even this day" means 'right now', ‘immediately’. We see here the importance of immediate action, "Today, if you will hear His voice". Human nature has a terrible tendency to put off until tomorrow what we should do today. We think of all the appeals to respond "Today" throughout Deuteronomy, and the fast moving pace of Mark's Gospel and Acts, with people responding and being baptized immediately.
The blessings of the restored Kingdom (new wine, grain,
oil etc.) were being abused. Hag. 1:8 describes the need to go up onto the mountain and build the
temple- as if to recall attention to Ezekiel’s opening vision of the
temple as built on a mountain. But Judah would not, and therefore the
Kingdom blessings of corn, new wine and oil, as well as fruitfulness on
the mountains, were all withheld (Hag. 1:11). These are all aspects of the
promised Messianic Kingdom (e.g. Joel 2:19,24; Jer. 31:12). The very same
sequence of words occurs in Neh. 5:11; 10:37,39; 13:5- instead of giving
those things to Yahweh, the Jews stole them from each other, and jibbed
about paying them as tithes to Him. And thereby they precluded the
possibility of Yahweh richly blessing all His people with those very same
things in a Kingdom setting. As with all those who are rejected from God’s
purpose, they effectively rejected themselves from His Kingdom by their
behaviour, rather than Him rejecting them Himself.
Nehemiah 5:12 Then they said, We will restore them, and will require
nothing of them; so will we do, even as you say. Then I called the
priests, and took an oath of them- Maybe the priests were
called as witnesses, because accountability is always so important in
situations like this. And yet the priesthood was deeply corrupted,
according to Malachi. And only 12 years previously, Ezra had found many
priests married to non-Levites. Or the implication could be that the
priests were themselves guilty of this abuse. The corruption of the
priesthood at the restoration is a major concern of Malachi and Haggai.
The possibilities of the restored Kingdom as spoken of in the restoration
prophets, especially Ez. 40-48, were precluded by this corruption of the
priesthood. And this was the very reason why they went into captivity in
the first place.
That they would do according to this promise- There is no specific word for "promise" in Biblical Hebrew. A man's word was to be his promise, just as God's word is so certain of fulfilment that it is His promise. The Lord reflected this in His teaching that we need not embellish our words with oaths. For we should be absolutely truthful.
Nehemiah 5:13 Also I shook out my lap and said, So may God shake out every
man from His house and from His work that doesn’t perform this promise;
even thus may he be shaken out, and emptied. All the assembly said, Amen,
and praised Yahweh. The people did according to this promise- The
threat to remove such people from "His work" rather confirms my suggestion
on Neh. 4:22 that the "servants" involved in the building work were in
fact Jews who had been wrongfully made servants by the leadership abusing
them. Such workers, significant as they were in the rebuilding work, would
not be accepted in the work. For we cannot abuse others in the name of
doing God's work. For "promise" see on :12.
But again we note Nehemiah's tendency to exclude people from God's house and thus redefine God's people (see on Neh. 4:16, where he uses the term "house of Judah" to refer to those amongst Israel whom he considered the real people of God). He speaks on God's behalf, when as noted on :7 he had consulted not with God but with himself. He says God will cast them from His house and work- possibly referring to the hyper holy area he had walled off and sought to create around the temple. Or we can read as CEV "He will empty out everything you own, even taking away your houses".
In Neh. 8, Ezra reads the law to all the people. It's hard to be sure, but we could logically assume that that event was at the same time as these events of Neh. 5. Such a public reading of the law was surely to fulfil the command of Dt. 31:10-12, to do so every seventh jubilee year- when there should anyway have been a release: "At the end of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the feast of tents, when all Israel has come to appear before Yahweh your God in the place which He shall choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women and the little ones and your foreigner who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear Yahweh your God". We note that the reading of the law was to be for the foreigner as well, in the hope he would also come into covenant relationship with "Yahweh your God". And so the release of debts should have been clear to Israel anyway. Tragically, the people heard the law- and were conned into thinking that they had to therefore separate from Gentiles.
Nehemiah 5:14 Moreover from the time that I was appointed to be their
governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year even to the thirty
second year of Artaxerxes the king, that is, twelve years, I and my brothers
did not eat the bread of the governor- This is inserted later, as
Nehemiah looks back upon his 12 years in Jerusalem. This was presumably a
second visit, after the exploratory visit of Neh. 1. All that time,
Nehemiah and his immediate family didn't eat the food which he as the
governor could have demanded as tax from the local population. He realized
they were starving and didn't demand this from them. The
description of his 12 years as governor fits well with these being his
memoirs at the end of his life. All this begs the question as to where
Nehemiah got his income. Clearly he was a well paid civil servant funded
by the Persian empire. But "The Satrap had to collect the royal tax from
the governors of small provinces as he and his civil servants were not
paid by the king... Any cessation of payment was regarded as rebellion"
(Gathaka 1992:196). This would mean that Nehemiah for 12 years was
responsible for taxing the Jews in Yehud. And taxation rates went up from
20% at the time of Cyrus to around 40-50% at Nehemiah's time. Indeed one
of the main reasons for the decline of the Persian empire was
overtaxation, to fund the wars in Greece and Egypt and to compensate for
the disaster at Marathon. So Nehemiah on one hand is to be commended for
using the tax income to pay for the welfare of others. On the other hand,
he is tacitly admitting that he was very far from the liberator of Zion
which he potentially could have been. He was enforcing and continuing
Persian colonial control over God's people.
Nehemiah 5:15 But the former governors who were before me were supported
by the people, and took bread and wine from them, besides forty shekels of
silver. Yes, even their servants ruled over the people: but I didn’t do
so, because of the fear of God-
Zerubbabel was the first Biblically recorded governor of these
former governors. We learn here that he had heavily taxed the people. No
wonder he failed to be the Messiah figure that he potentially could have
been. These former governor "laid burdens upon" the people (RVmg.) and
"lorded it over" (RVmg.) them. We recall the complaint about overtaxation
concerning Solomon "Your father made our yoke heavy" (2 Chron. 10:10,14).
All this certainly portrays Zerubbabel negatively. That Nehemiah relieved
the burdens and retracted his own demand of usury is surely a positive
about him. Perhaps it is alluded to when Paul likewise says that "in
everything I kept myself from being burdensome unto you" (2 Cor. 11:9).
Remember that Nehemiah had offered to build the governor's house in Jerusalem (see on Neh. 2:8); and this was done, right near to the temple (see on Neh. 3:7). Yet those governors impoverished the Jews with their various taxes to fund their own luxury living. There was a forty shekels tax, and additionally it seems they demanded a food tax from the people- which was hard to pay in time of famine. This was surely a compromise too far by Nehemiah. And so in his memoirs he looks back and recognizes his compromises; and what honest man doesn't look back in life and realize he compromised at times when he shouldn't have done.
Is. 58:1,2 is a criticism of Judah in
exile and also of those who did return to the land- they sought God daily,
and yet abused their brethren (Is. 58:6), just as recorded in Neh. 5:15.
If they had ceased from their sins, "Then shall your light break
forth as the morning", if they had fed the hungry etc., then
would've been fulfilled the Messianic Kingdom prophecies of the light
of Zion rising above the Gentiles etc. (Is. 58:10,12 cp. Is. 60:1).
Neh. 5:8 records Nehemiah’s comment that the wealthy Jews were
victimizing the poorer Jews just as Babylon once had, and now Nehemiah
needed to redeem them from slavery just as God had redeemed His people
from servitude in Babylon. God’s deliverance of His people simply hadn’t
been responded to. Tragically, it would appear from Neh. 5:15 that
Zerubbabel, the potential Messiah of Israel, had acted in this oppressive
way too.
Nehemiah 5:16 Yes, also I continued in the work of this wall, neither
bought we any land; and all my servants were gathered there to the work-
LXX "Also in the work of the wall I treated them not with rigor, I bought
not land: and all that were gathered together came thither to the work".
The idea is that the impoverished people were willing to sell their land
for food, they were so desperate because of the famine. But Nehemiah
didn't buy their land from them. They were not receiving the abundant
harvests promised as being part of the restored Kingdom of God; for they
had precluded the fulfilment of those prophecies. Instead, Nehemiah put
his own servants to the work, presumably implying he himself paid them.
The desperation of selling their land for food recalls the situation in
Egypt during the famine at the time of Joseph. The people of God had acted
like Egyptians and so were being treated like them.
Nehemiah 5:17 Moreover there were at my table, of the Jews and the rulers,
one hundred and fifty men, besides those who came to us from among the
nations that were around us- Instead of demanding tax and support
from the local population as he could have done, as the governor, Nehemiah
did the opposite- he gave food to others, including to Gentiles. To eat at
the same table was a sign of religious fellowship, and in this there was a
small fulfilment of the prophetic vision of a new, multiethnic people of
God in the restored Kingdom. But Nehemiah didn't go far enough in this.
Perhaps Nehemiah was some kind of potential Messiah- for the surrounding Gentiles ‘came up’ to him and shared in the luxurious temple meals (a common Kingdom prophecy- the same Hebrew words are used for the Gentiles ‘coming up’ to the temple in Is. 60:5,11; Jer. 16:19; Hag. 2:7; Zech. 8:22). Those meals could have been the Messianic banquets. Is. 56:6,7 had promised that if the Gentiles accepted the God of Israel and kept the Sabbath, "even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted on My altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples". But the Sabbath was polluted, as Nehemiah recorded, and the Gentiles were mixed with and affirmed in their idolatry, rather than converted and brought to worship in the temple. And so the revelation of Yahweh’s salvation and righteousness in the Kingdom was deferred. The way Jews and Gentiles ate together at Nehemiah’s table pointed forward to what was almost possible. But in the end, they mixed with and adopted the ways of the Gentiles, and their leadership arrogantly developed a theology that said that dirty Gentiles could never be saved; for salvation, they reasoned, was only for Jews. The idea that the temple was to be a place for Gentiles also to worship not only didn't come true; but the very opposite happened. The Jews became intolerant of the Gentiles, nationalistically proud, and rejected the Samaritans from worshipping in the rebuilt Jewish temple. And therefore the Samaritans had to build their own temple on Mount Gerazim. Historical records suggest that the Samaritans dearly wished to worship in the Jews' temple, and only built their own one because the Jews disallowed them. See M. Gaster, The Samaritans (Oxford: O.U.P., 1925) p. 28 ff. And now looking back in his memoirs, Nehemiah is recognizing that 'I was not Jesus'. He was not the Messiah figure he could have been.
It could be that "the Jews" here refers to the golah Jews who had returned from Babylon; and the others were the Jews who had not gone into exile, whom they despised: "besides those who came to us from among the nations that were around us". In this case, Nehemiah was using table fellowship in order to bind together these two opposed groups, the abusers and the abused. Just as the Lord's table is intended likewise as a table of grace and unity. Nehemiah did at times mistreat other Jews; I have discussed earlier his dislike of the Sanballat - Eliashib- Meshullam - Tobiah - Jehohanan family, an example of the priestly and ruling families intermarrying; and how after the wall was built, he declared them as apostate as Gentiles. And yet at this point, he does well in standing up for Jews whom other Jews considered as Gentiles. This is the typical contradictory nature of human behaviour. We wrongly assume that we are logical and consistent in our judgments, when in fact we are not. We see it all the time in church life. A brother will refuse fellowship to another brother on very flimsy grounds, and yet exercise amazing grace and acceptance towards someone within his church who is clearly morally and doctrinally astray. And in his memoir, Nehemiah looks back on his life and sees it.
Nehemiah 5:18 Now that which was prepared for one day was one ox and six
choice sheep; also fowls were prepared for me, and once in ten days store
of all sorts of wine. Yet for all this I didn’t demand the bread due to
the governor, because the bondage was heavy on this people-
"The bread due to the governor" was the tax payable in food to the Persian
governor, especially meat and wine. We recall that Nehemiah had agreed to
be funded in order to rebuild Jerusalem, but the deal was that he built a
mansion for the Persian governor. And we saw on Neh. 3:7 that this was
built right on the temple wall. But this was all part of a repressive,
colonial regime. Very far from the visions of Zion being radically free.
Nehemiah should never have made this compromise. God would have provided
for His work, without him taking the obvious human source of funding- from
the Persian empire. He himself tried to lift the heavy bondage on the
people, in the spirit of the Messiah who would say that He came to lift
such burdens from the poor. But time and again, Nehemiah failed to be the
Messianic figure as he should have been. Just like us, especially as we
reconstruct the Lord's death on the cross.
LXX has "yet with these I required not the bread of extortion". He was generous; and didn't demand of others what he legitimately could have done, realizing their impoverished situation. The famine, however, was a punishment for their lack of spirituality. But still Nehemiah didn't demand from them what he could have done. And we too need to be sensitive to the situation of others, even if it is partially their own fault.
Nehemiah 5:19 Remember me, my God, for good, for all that I have done for
this people- Again we sense a works based attitude in Nehemiah,
considering that good works as it were cancel out sins, and the judgment
will be a summary account of the arithmetic. This isn't what judgment day
will be about; salvation was to be by grace, as the restoration prophets
had taught. And yet for all his faith and good works, it seems Nehemiah
failed to appreciate this. And perhaps this was why he failed to be the
Messianic ruler figure which he might have been.
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