The great Rab-shakeh, magnificently attired in all the brilliancy of Oriental costume, was walking towards the city gate. Above him stretched the deep blue sky of the East; about and around him streamed the warm rays of the sun. It was the month of December, yet no cold, biting wind met him, and he needed no warm clothing to shield him from the frost and snow.
The city through which the Rab-shakeh walked was the beautiful capital of the kingdom of Persia. Its name was Shushan, the City of Lilies, because of the fields of sweet-scented flowers which surrounded it. It was built on a sunny plain, through which flowed two rivers—the Choaspes and the Ulai. Both of them sparkled in the sunshine, as they wound through the plain.
In the distance, beyond the plain and beyond the rivers, the great Rab-shakeh saw a high mountain range about twenty-five miles from the city. He had good reason to love those high mountains, which rose many thousands of feet above the plain, for even in the hottest weather, when the heat in Shushan would otherwise be unbearable, he could always enjoy the cooling breezes which came from the snowfields on the top of that mountain range.
The City of Lilies was a very ancient place. It was probably built long before the time of Abraham. We read in Genesis 14 of a certain Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, who gathered together a number of neighboring kings, and with their help invaded Palestine and took Lot prisoner. This Chedorlaomer probably lived by these very rivers, the Choaspes and the Ulai, and Shushan was the capital city of the old kingdom of Elam over which he ruled.
Later on, the City of Lilies was taken by the Babylonians. They had their own capital city, the mighty Babylon, on the Euphrates. Although it was not the capital, Shushan was still a very important place in the great empire of Persia. We read of Daniel, the prime minister, staying in the palace of Shushan, to which he had been sent to transact business for the King of Babylon, and it was during his visit to the City of Lilies that God sent him one of his most famous visions. In his dream he thought he was standing by the river Ulai, the very river he could see from the palace window. Before that river stood the ram with the two horns and also the strong he-goat, by means of which God drew out before his eyes a picture of the future history of the world.
But the great Babylonian empire did not last long. Cyrus the Persian captured Babylon. Belshazzar was slain; the great Assyrian power passed away, and the second great world-empire, the Persian empire, was built upon its ruins.
What city did the Persian kings make their capital? Not Babylon, with its mighty walls and massive gates, but Shushan, the City of Lilies. They chose it as their chief city for three reasons: it was nearer to their old home, Persia; it was cooler than Babylon because of the neighboring mountains; and lastly, and above all, it had the best water in the world. The water of the river Choaspes was so much esteemed for its freshness, its clearness and its healthiness, that the Persian kings would drink no other. They had it carried with them wherever they went. Even when they undertook long, warlike expeditions, the water of the Choaspes was considered a necessary provision for the journey.
The City of Lilies, in the days of the Rab-shakeh, was a wonderland of beauty surrounded by fruit gardens and corn fields, the white houses standing out among dark palm trees, and the high walls encircled by groves of citron and lemon trees. As the Rab-shakeh walked along, the air was scented with their blossoms, and with the sweet fragrance of the countless Shushan lilies, growing beside the rivers.
Above him, in the midst of the city, stood his lordly home. It was a magnificent place, for it was the palace of the greatest king in the world, the mighty King of Persia. The palace in which the Rab-shakeh lived was not the old palace in which Daniel stayed when he visited Shushan. It was quite a new building, built only forty years before by the great Ahasuerus, the husband of Queen Esther. It was to celebrate the opening of this gigantic palace that the enormous and magnificent feast which we read of in Esther 1 was given by the Persian monarch who was its founder.
This new palace was built on a high platform of stone and brick, and the view from its windows was magnificent. In the center of the palace was a large hall filled with pillars, and round this hall were built the grand reception rooms of the king. When the ruins of Shushan, the City of Lilies, were discovered by Sir Fenwick Williams in 1851, the bases of the very pillars which supported the roof of the great Rabshakeh’s splendid home were still visible on the plain between the two rivers.
But who was this Rab-shakeh, and why did he live in the most glorious palace in the world? He was a Jew, a foreigner, a descendant of those Jews whom Nebuchadnezzar took captive, and carried into Babylon. Yet, although he was one of an alien race, we find him in one of the highest offices of the Persian court, namely, the office of Rab-shakeh.
The word Rab, so often found in the Bible, is a Chaldean word which means Master. Thus, in the New Testament, we find the Jewish teachers often addressed by the title Rabbi, Master. But the title Rab was also used in speaking of the highest officials in an Eastern court. Three such titles we find in the Bible: Rab-saris, Master of the Eunuchs (Jer. 39:1313So Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard sent, and Nebushasban, Rab-saris, and Nergal-sharezer, Rab-mag, and all the king of Babylon's princes; (Jeremiah 39:13)); Rab-mag, Master of the Magi (Jer. 39:1313So Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard sent, and Nebushasban, Rab-saris, and Nergal-sharezer, Rab-mag, and all the king of Babylon's princes; (Jeremiah 39:13)); Rab-shakeh, Master of the Cupbearers (2 Kings 18:1717And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rab-saris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller's field. (2 Kings 18:17)).
This last office, that of Rab-shakeh, was a very important and responsible one. It was the duty of the man who held it to take charge of the king’s wine, to ensure that no poison was put into it, and to present it in a jeweled cup to the king at the royal banquets. It was a position of great trust because the king’s life rested in the cupbearer’s keeping. It was also a position of great power, because the Persian monarchs kept themselves secluded from the public and admitted very few to their royal presence. The cupbearer, however, had access at all times to the king, and had the opportunity of speaking to him, a privilege denied to most others.
Although the Rab-shakeh was a captive Jew, King Artaxerxes felt he could trust him fully, and he was not disappointed in his confidence, for the great Rab-shakeh served a higher Master than the King of Persia. He was a faithful servant of the God of heaven.
The Rab-shakeh’s name was Nehemiah, a name chosen by his parents because of its beautiful meaning. Nehemiah means “The Lord my Comforter.” What a sweet thought for Hachaliah and his wife as they called their boy in from play, or as they put him to bed and said good-night to him: “The Lord is my Comforter.”
Life in sunny Shushan for Nehemiah’s parents was surely no brighter than life in our more clouded lands. They had their times of sorrow as well as their times of joy; they had their temptations, their cares, their anxieties and their trials, just as we have. How blessed for them to be reminded where true comfort was to be found, so that they might turn to God in every time of sorrow with the name of their little son on their lips, “The Lord is my Comforter.” So Nehemiah grew up as a constant reminder in his parents’ home of the comfort of God.
What do we know of Nehemiah? Can we say from our heart, “The Lord is my Comforter”? I take to Him each of my sorrows, I tell Him each of my troubles. He understands them, and He understands me, and He comforts me as no other can. The Lord is indeed my Comforter.
How many children Hachaliah had, we are not told, but Nehemiah certainly had at least one brother, Hanani. Some years before this, there had been a separation in Hachaliah’s family. Hanani, Nehemiah’s brother, had left Shushan for a distant land.
Twelve years had passed since all the Jews in Shushan had been roused by the news that Ezra the scribe was going from Babylon to Jerusalem, and that he was calling upon all who loved the home of their forefathers to go with him, and to help him in the work he had undertaken. Bad news had been brought to Babylon of the state of matters in Palestine. Those who had returned with Zerubbabel were not prospering, either in their souls or in their bodies, and Ezra, shocked by what he had heard, determined to go to Jerusalem in order to correct the problems, and rouse the people to a sense of their duty. A brave company had set out with him. Eight thousand Jews had been ready to leave comfort, luxury and wealth behind, that they might go to the desolate city, and try to stir up its people to energy and life.
One of the 8,000 who went with Ezra was Nehemiah’s brother, Hanani. It is possible that Nehemiah himself was at that time too young to go. It is also probable that Hachaliah, the father, having been born and brought up in Shushan, was hard to move. So Hanani set forth alone, and the brothers were parted.
In the twelve years that he had been gone, the family in Shushan had probably had no news of the absent Hanani. It took five months to get from Shushan to Jerusalem, and in those days, when all the conveniences we enjoy were unknown, they would not only never expect to meet again, but they would also never expect to hear any news of one another. But as the Rab-shakeh walked to the gate of Shushan, on the day on which the story opens, he spied a caravan of travelers coming along the northern road. They had evidently come a long way, for they were tired and travel-stained. The mules walked slowly and heavily under their burdens and the skin of the travelers was burned and cracked by the hot sun of the desert. Their clothes were faded and covered with dust, and their sandals were full of holes.
Where could the caravan have come from? Nehemiah found to his astonishment that it had come from Jerusalem, and to his still-greater surprise, he found among the travelers his long-lost brother Hanani. We are not told why Hanani had come back to Shushan, but his family certainly must have been glad to see him.
As they walked together through Shushan to the palace, the Rab-shakeh asked anxiously after Jerusalem. Had Ezra’s work been successful? How were matters progressing? Were the people more in earnest? Was Jerusalem thriving?
But the travelers had a dismal tale to tell. Affairs in the Holy City were about as bad as it was possible for them to be.
In other words, things were just where they were twelve years before. The people were miserable, depressed and troubled. The city itself was still an utter ruin, just as Nebuchadnezzar left it. The temple, it is true, was built at last, but nothing more had been done. The walls were still just a pile of rubble; the gates were nowhere to be seen and only a few blackened stones marked the place where they used to stand.
The Rab-shakeh’s heart was very heavy as he went to his rooms in the royal palace. What terrible news he had heard!
Jerusalem was still, after all Ezra’s efforts to restore it, a desolate, ruined city. But he must have remembered his own name and its meaning: Nehemiah, The Lord is my Comforter. At once, without a moment’s delay, he went to his Comforter. He wept, he mourned, he fasted and he poured out all his sorrow to God. As a child runs to his mother and pours into her ear his grief or his disappointment, so Nehemiah hurried to his God.
Suppose we walk through a conservatory and admire rare flowers of all types from every part of the world. In the conservatory we see a beautiful azalea covered with hundreds of pure white blossoms. But there is so much else to see in that conservatory that we scarcely notice it. We are not at all surprised to see it there, nor are we amazed to see it healthy and covered in blossoms, for we know that it has the ideal circumstances in which to grow and flourish.
But suppose, on the other hand, that walking through the slums of a huge city we see a similar sight. In one of the filthiest streets we see, in an attic window, a pure white azalea full of flowers. Now we are really surprised to see it, for it is in the most unlikely place; there is nothing to encourage its growth, yet there it stands, a marvel of beauty! And we look at it and say, “Wonderful!”
Surely in Nehemiah we have seen the white azalea in the attic. For where should we expect to find a man of God? Dwelling in the holy temple in Jerusalem, surrounded by everything to remind him of God, breathing in the very atmosphere of purity, with godly people all around him, with everything to help him to be holy and pure; no one would be astonished to find a man of God in such a place as that.
But here was Nehemiah, the Rab-shakeh, living in a heathen palace, in the midst of a wicked court, surrounded by drunkenness, sensuality and all that is vile and impure, breathing in the very atmosphere of sin. Yet we find him a plant of the Lord, pure as the azalea, a man of faith, a man of prayer, a holy man of God. With everything against him, with nothing to favor his growth in holiness, he was a flourishing plant in the garden of the Lord. The plants of God’s grace often thrive in very unlikely places. There was holy Joseph in the court of Pharaoh, faithful Obadiah in the house of wicked Jezebel, righteous Daniel in Babylon, and saints even in Caesar’s household.
Are we ever tempted to say in our hearts, I cannot serve the Master faithfully. If I were in another position, if my home life were favorable to my deciding for Christ, if I had different companions, a different job, different surroundings, then I would grow in grace and bring forth the fruit of a holy life. But as I am, and where I am, it is simply impossible; I can never, under existing circumstances, live near to God, or be what I often long to be—a true, happy, useful Christian.
What does the Master say as He hears words like these? “My grace is sufficient for thee.” “As thy day so shall thy strength be.”
Even in most unlikely and unfruitful soil God can make His plants grow and flourish. Where I am, as I am, and in exactly the same surroundings as I now am, God can bless me, and give me grace to serve and to glorify Him. If I do not become a flourishing plant, it is not my position that is to blame. It is because I will not seek that grace which the Lord is ready to give me. “Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”