Men have tried for many years to count the number of stars in the heavens, but each new telescope that man develops only shows more and more. Galaxies beyond galaxies appear with each newer and more powerful telescope, until we can only say that it is impossible to accurately count them. They are a marvelous example of the power of the Creator. The regions of space, while finite, are too vast for man to probe, yet God their Maker knows each star by name.
And all these countless worlds are under the eye of the King of kings. He rules all, watches all, guides all. Can I, then, believe that He will have time to take notice of my tiny affairs? Can He care if I am sick or worried or poor or depressed? Surely I must be ready to say with the Psalmist, “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?”
Yet that quaint, old saying of John Flavel the Puritan is right, “The man who watches for Providence will never want [lack] a Providence to watch.” In other words, he who trusts his concerns to God, he who puts his cause in the Lord’s hands, will never be disappointed. The God who rules the universe will not forget to care of him, but will watch him and guide him and help him as tenderly as if he were the only being in that universe.
Saint Augustine used to say, “Lord, when I look upon mine own life, it seems Thou hast led me so carefully and tenderly; Thou canst have attended to none else. But when I see how wonderfully Thou hast led the world and art leading it, I am amazed that Thou hast had time to attend to such as I.”
Nehemiah was watching for God. He had taken his case to God; he had trusted all to Him, and the God in whom he had put his confidence did not disappoint him.
“Send me unto... the city of my father’s sepulchers [Jerusalem], that I may build it,” said the cupbearer, and the great Persian king did not refuse his request, but (prompted, it may be, by the queen who was sitting by him) he asked: “For how long shall the journey be? and when wilt thou return?”
“And I set him a time.” How long a time we are not told. Nehemiah did not return to Persia for twelve years, but it is probable that he asked for a shorter leave of absence, and that this was extended later on, in order to enable him to finish his work.
Cheered and encouraged by the king’s manner, feeling sure that God was with him and was prospering him, Nehemiah asked another favor of the king. The Persian empire at that time was so vast that it reached from the river Indus to the Mediterranean, and the Euphrates was looked upon as naturally dividing it into two parts, east and west. Nehemiah asked (Neh. 2:77Moreover I said unto the king, If it please the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond the river, that they may convey me over till I come into Judah; (Nehemiah 2:7)) for letters to the governors of the western division of the empire, that they might be instructed to help him and forward him on his way.
In verse 8 he asked for something more. There was a certain man named Asaph, who had charge of the king’s forest or park. The word which Nehemiah really used was “paradise” —the king’s paradise. The derivation of the word is from the Persian words Pairi, “round about,” and Deza, “a wall”. Up and down their empire, in various places, the Persian kings had these paradises—parks or pleasure grounds—surrounded and shut off from the neighboring country by a high fence or wall. These paradises were places of beauty and loveliness, where the king and his friends might meet and walk together, and enjoy each other’s company.
Is not this the Lord’s own picture of the place where His own would be with Him. Did He not say to the thief on the cross, “Today thou shalt be with Me in paradise”? It was a name given by our Lord to that place where He would meet the thief, even the Garden of the Lord, the pleasure ground of the King of kings. In paradise His people enjoy His company, and see His face, and walk with Him and talk with Him, waiting for that glorious day when they shall pass from the garden of the King into the palace itself.
We are not told where this particular paradise was, of which Asaph was the keeper, but probably it was the place which the kings of Judah had always made their pleasure ground. This was at Etam, about seven miles from Jerusalem, where Solomon had fine gardens, and had made large lakes of water, fed by a hidden and sealed spring.
Solomon himself twice used the word paradise of his gardens, and these are the only places in which the word occurs in the Old Testament, except in chapter 2:8. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 2:5,5I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits: (Ecclesiastes 2:5) “I made me gardens and orchards [paradises].” In {s 12176}Song of Solomon 4:13,13Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, (Song of Solomon 4:13) he speaks of “an orchard [paradise] of pomegranates, with precious fruits.”
Nehemiah wanted wood from Asaph’s paradise for three purposes, and he asked the king to give him an order for the wood that he might deliver to the keeper.
He wanted wood for the gates of the palace of the house. The house means the temple, and the palace should be translated the castle. It was a tower which stood at the northwest corner of the temple platform and commanded and protected the temple courts.
He wanted wood for the gates of the wall.
He wanted wood for “the house that I shall enter into,” that is, for his own house.
All was granted. The royal secretaries were called and told to write the required instructions to the governors beyond the river, and to Asaph, the bailiff of the forest. Nehemiah took no credit to himself that all had gone so prosperously. He did not praise his own courage or wisdom or tact in making the request; he knew it was a direct answer to a direct prayer. He recognized the fact that it was God’s doing and not his.
“The king granted me, according to the good hand of my God upon me.” That was Ezra’s motto, quoted by him again and again (Ezra 7:6,9,28; 8:18,22,316This Ezra went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given: and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him. (Ezra 7:6)
9For upon the first day of the first month began he to go up from Babylon, and on the first day of the fifth month came he to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God upon him. (Ezra 7:9)
28And hath extended mercy unto me before the king, and his counsellors, and before all the king's mighty princes. And I was strengthened as the hand of the Lord my God was upon me, and I gathered together out of Israel chief men to go up with me. (Ezra 7:28)
18And by the good hand of our God upon us they brought us a man of understanding, of the sons of Mahli, the son of Levi, the son of Israel; and Sherebiah, with his sons and his brethren, eighteen; (Ezra 8:18)
22For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him. (Ezra 8:22)
31Then we departed from the river of Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month, to go unto Jerusalem: and the hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy, and of such as lay in wait by the way. (Ezra 8:31)). In all his deliverances, in every one of his mercies, he had seen the good hand of his God, and he had taken those words, “The good hand of my God upon me,” as the keynote of his praise and as the motto of his life.
Nehemiah had, in all probability, never even met Ezra, yet here we find him quoting Ezra’s favorite saying. Can it be that Hanani, his brother, who had been one of Ezra’s companions, had repeated it to him? Can it be that in order to cheer and encourage his brother when he undertook the difficult task of speaking to the king, he told how he found them a sure refuge in time of need? If so, Nehemiah probably hurried to his brother, when his duties in the palace were completed, to tell him that Ezra’s motto had held good again, for “the king granted me, according to the good hand of my God upon me.”
“The good hand of my God.” What wonderful words! Though trouble or temptation or death itself come, I will not fear. The good hand of my God is over me. None can pluck me from that hand. Oh, how blessed to be one so sheltered, so shielded underneath the good hand of my God! But the same hand is against them who do evil. I must either be protected by the hand, or have the hand raised against me. Which shall it be?
All was ready now. The preparations were ended, and Nehemiah, accompanied by his brother Hanani and by a royal escort of soldiers, set forth on his long journey.
Jerusalem, the city of David—how often he had dreamed of it, how earnestly he had longed to see it! Now, at last, his desire was to be granted. The travelers could not sing, as they rode slowly over the scorching desert, “Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem,” for the gates of the city were burned with fire, and only a blackened space showed where each had stood. But they may have joined together in that other psalm, which was probably written for this time: Psalm 102. “Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favor her, yea, the set time, is come. For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust thereof.”
They had no problems on the journey, traveling under the care of the king’s guard, but surely Nehemiah saw trouble ahead as he handed his letters to the governors beyond the river. One of them was Sanballat, the satrap or governor of Samaria. His name was an Assyro-Babylonian one, showing that he was probably descended from one of the Babylonian families settled in Samaria; it signifies, “The moon god gives life.” His native place was Horonaim in Moab, and Sanballat was, by nationality, a descendant of Lot.
With the Samaritan governor was his secretary Tobiah, his servant or slave. Tobiah was also descended from Lot, for he was an Ammonite, and standing evidently very high in Sanballat’s favor. It was probably Tobiah who read Artaxerxes’s letter to his master, and both their faces became very gloomy as they heard the news it contained.
At the court of Sanballat was his friend Geshem the Arabian, the head or chief of a tribe of Arabs. We find from the ancient Assyrian monuments that they had been placed in Samaria by Sargon, King of Assyria. This man Geshem was therefore a Bedouin, a descendant of Esau.
These three, Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem could not conceal their disgust that anyone had been sent from Persia to look after the welfare of Jerusalem. So far, they had trampled the Jews under foot as much as possible, and the Jews had been powerless to resist them. But now here was a man come direct from the court at Shushan, with letters from their royal master in his hand, and with orders to rebuild and fortify Jerusalem. From that moment Sanballat and his friends became Nehemiah’s bitter enemies, determined to resist and oppose him in every way they could.
Finally the tiring journey was over and Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem. He told no one why he had come, but, worn out with the traveling, he went quietly to the house of a friend, probably to that of his brother Hanani, and for three days he rested there. Then, on the third night after his arrival, when everyone in Jerusalem was asleep, he rose, mounted a mule or donkey, and, with a few faithful followers, stole out to explore for himself the extent of the ruin, to see how things really were, what was the state of the walls, and how much had to be done to put them into good repair.
Riding out of the city on the south side, at the place where the Valley Gate had stood (a gate which was so called because it opened into the Valley of Hinnom), he turned into the ravine, and went eastward. No doubt there was a moon, and by its light he could see the heaps of rubbish and the work of the fire which had destroyed the gates 150 years before. How sad and forsaken it all looked in the moonlight as he turned towards the Dragon Well. The site of the Dragon Well is very uncertain, but it is generally identified with Upper Gihon. This is the only spring near Jerusalem, and its water is carried by an underground passage to the Pool of Siloam. It is an intermittent spring, suddenly rising and as suddenly falling at irregular intervals. During the past century two explorers, Dr. Robinson and Mr. Smith, were just about to measure the water when they found it suddenly rising. In less than five minutes it had risen a foot; in ten minutes more it had ceased to flow and had sunk to its former level.
How eagerly those with Nehemiah must have pointed out each object to him! We can picture Hanani walking by his side, showing him all the different objects, so familiar to himself, but so strange to Nehemiah.
Coming down the Valley of Hinnom he reached the Dung Gate, outside of which lay piles of rubbish and filth. It had all been swept out of the city, collected together by this gate, and left to rot in the valley. Here he examined in the moonlight the masses of fallen stonework, the small portions of wall still standing, and the gap where the gate used to stand before it was burned.
Then on he went until he came to the Gate of the Fountain, opposite the King’s Pool, or Pool of Siloam, which watered the king’s garden. But at this southeast corner the rubbish was so great that the mule he was riding on could not proceed. Pile upon pile of stone, heap upon heap of broken fragments of what had once been so magnificent, lay so thickly massed together that it was no use attempting to ride further. So Nehemiah dismounted and, probably leaving his mule with some of his companions by the Gate of the Fountain, he went on foot a little further.
Going up the Kedron valley he examined the eastern wall, which was in much better condition than the rest, and then, turning to the west, he came back to the rest of the party and returned with them to the Valley Gate.
Now Nehemiah had seen the work before him, and realized that it was both vast and difficult. He was ready now to put his plan before the people of Jerusalem. He found the city governed, not by a single man, but by a kind of town council. He now summoned a meeting of these rulers, and invited the nobles and the working men to be present.
Then he made his appeal: “Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.”
Then, to cheer them on to make the effort, he told them how God had helped him up to that point. He recounted what the good hand of God had done for him already in opening the king’s heart and the king’s purse.
What response did he meet with? As one man, that large assembly rose and joined in the cry, “Let us rise up and build.” How happy Nehemiah must have been to find such ready help, to find those he spoke to willing at once to fall in with his plan and help him in his work.
Perhaps if Nehemiah had lived today he might have had cold water thrown on him and his plan. One would have risen and would have said, “The work is too hard; the heaps of rubbish are too great; it is impossible to undertake such a task. Look at the southeast corner. Who will ever be able to clear away the heaps that have accumulated there?”
Another would have been sure to grumble at the expense. He would have asked how they, poor downtrodden Jews as they were, could ever afford to give time or money to such a vast undertaking.
A third would have risen with a long face, and would have asked, “What will Sanballat say if we rebuild the wall? What will Tobiah do? What will Geshem whisper? Now at least we have no open quarrel with the governors, but who can tell what the result of our taking action in this matter will be? Surely it is better to let well enough alone.”
A fourth would have given, as his opinion, that what had served for 150 years would surely last their lifetime. True, Jerusalem was forlorn and defenseless, but they had grown accustomed to it now. It struck Nehemiah, of course, coming as he did fresh from the glories of Shushan, but they had become used to it, and he would soon do the same. Surely there was no need to make a disturbance about it or to run into any risk about it.
A fifth would have suggested angrily that the old inhabitants of the city were better judges of its requirements than a stranger, and that it was for the town council to propose such a scheme if they saw the necessity for it, and not for a newcomer who had been in Jerusalem less than a week.
These and countless other objections could have been raised, but the Jerusalem committee did not act that way. They did not fill Nehemiah’s way with difficulties and his soul with discouragement. A difficult bit of work lay before him and before them; he was ready to lead, and they were ready to follow. “Let us rise up and build,” they cried. And “they strengthened their hands for this good work.”
Let us take care that we, as servants of Christ, follow their example. Let us never be seen with the bucket of cold water, ready to throw it on the efforts of others for good. As “iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” Let us always be ready with the word of encouragement, the helping hand, the cheering spirit of hope. There is work for us among the ruins of God’s fair world, and the laborers are few. Let us then rise and build, each of us in earnest, each of us encouraging his brother, each of us looking beyond the discouragement of earth to the Master’s “Well done, good and faithful servant.”