Besides making Jerusalem a safe and pleasant city, there was something else very special about the order of the king for Nehemiah to rebuild that city,—that was the time of the order. It was a very important date for the Jewish people, and is of very great interest to us, even now.
Since the time of Moses and David and the prophets, the Jewish nation had been told that God would send a mighty ruler, called the Messiah, to deliver them from their enemies; but no date had been given them, until an angel of God told the time to Daniel, who was a captive Jew in Babylon, living some years before the time of Nehemiah.
The angel said to Daniel, “Know therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks.” Daniel 9:25. To the Jewish people “a week” meant “seven”; they counted their years in periods of sevens; so to them “seven weeks and three score and two weeks”, altogether sixty nine “weeks”, meant, 483 years. Their year had about the same number of days as we count a year.
Nehemiah and others may have known of the words of the angel to Daniel, but at least, the Jewish nation afterward had the writings of both Nehemiah and Daniel, and should have known that in 483 years after the date given by Nehemiah, the Messiah would come.
They very much needed the Great King to deliver them and rule over them, as they were not a free nation any more, but were under the rule. of what were called Gentile kings, and have been ever since.
The order of King Artaxerxes was in his twentieth year (Neh. 2:1-9). We cannot now reckon the dates of those kings of Babylon and Persia, but the people living then, and for many years after, could keep exact account. Yet many of the Jewish people still are looking for the Messiah, so they seem not to have believed the records of Daniel and Nehemiah.
Those 483 years are long gone by. Did not God keep His promise made by the angel to Daniel? Yes, God’s promise surely came true.
“When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His. Son.” Gal. 4:4.
Some of the people who lived at the end of those 483 years, and very many others since, have believed that Jesus of Nazareth came to be the great Messiah of Israel. He rode into Jerusalem as King David and Solomon did, but the leaders of the city did not want Him to be king (Matthew 21:1-1.6).
We do not know of Nehemiah’s last days; perhaps the king allowed him to stay at Jerusalem to help the people more. His writing was to encourage the Jews until their Messiah came, His is the last sure account we have of the people in Judah, until the books of the New Testament; and when we read his record we too are encouraged to remember that God’s promises always come true.
“Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” Romans 15:4.
Notice that Nehemiah gave also the month of the king’s order; it was called the month, Nisan, in the king’s calendar, which was the same as the month Abib in the Jewish calendar, the Passover time (Exo. 12:2; 13:4; Lev. 23:5).
ML 02/11/1940