79. Nehemiah

The Jews Loved Babylon

After the first and second expeditions of the Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem, there were still many Jews left in the Persian empire, East of the Euphrates River.  At the time Nehemiah left Babylon, it was already 161 years since Nebuchadnezzar had taken Jerusalem captive.   Many Jews did not even want to leave the home in which they, their parents and grandparents had been born.

It was in that time frame that Nehemiah heard distressing news about the Jews who had returned to their fatherland.  What he heard was this, The remnant left of the captivity there in the province (Judea) is in great affliction and shame. And the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are burned with fire. Neh 1:3.  While we were studying the book of Ezra we read these words, Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building. And they hired counselors against them to frustrate their purpose. Ezra 4:4-5.  By the time Nehemiah came on the scene, they had done much worse.  The had broken down the walls of Jerusalem and burned its gates.

When Nehemiah heard this he wept, mourned for days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of Heaven. Nehemiah 1:4.  It is a beautiful, lengthy prayer, well worth reading again and again until Nehemiah's contrition sinks into our own souls. 1:5-11.

In the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, Nehemiah was the king's cupbearer.  The cupbearer ... used to take the wine out of the vessels into the cup, and pour some of it into their left hand, and sup it up, that, if there was any poison in it, the king might not be harmed.  Gills Commentary.  

While Nehemiah was performing his duties the king realized that Nehemiah was sad.  The king said to me, Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart. Then I was very much afraid. 2:2.   It was strictly against the law, under the penalty of death, for anyone to appear sad in the king's presence.

Note these two extreme opposite opinions. Artaxerxes was an absolute despot, surrounded with the semi-divine honours that Orientals associate with the regal state.  Exp. Bible Commentary.

Though weak as a king, as a man he was kind-hearted and gentle. Few Persian monarchs would have been sufficiently interested in their attendants to notice whether they were sad or no; fewer still would have shown sympathy on such an occasion. A Xerxes (some do not accept that Xerxes is the same man as Artaxerxes) might have ordered the culprit to instant execution. Longimanus (Artaxerxes) feels compassion, and wishes to assuage the grief of his servant. Pulpit Commentary.

In response to the king, Nehemiah replied,  Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire? 2:3.  The king asked, What are you asking for?

Nehemiah's Prayer

So I prayed to the God of Heaven, 1:4.  The thing especially interesting in this verse is that Nehemiah prayed!  He did not count the beads on a rosary;  he did not find it necessary to kneel to pray;  he did not fold his hands to pray.  He was so in touch with Jehovah that an instantaneous prayer at that moment needed no ritual. 

Immediately after that prayer, Nehemiah said, If it please the king ... I pray that you would send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, so that I may build it. 2:5.

How long will you be gone, the king wanted to know.   Nehemiah gave him a time frame; he asked for a few months, but with the king's permission he actually stayed for twelve years.  After which he returned to Babylon and soon asked for permission to return to Jerusalem.  The king sent letters which would assure Nehemiah safe conduct to Judah.

Nehemiah carried another letter, addressed to Asaph.  Asaph was the keeper of the king's forest. 2:8. The Hebrew word used is one not applicable to a natural forest, but only to a park, or pleasure-ground planted with trees, and surrounded by a fence or wall. The Hebrew word is pardes, the word from which we get "paradise". We must understand a royal park in the vicinity of Jerusalem, of which a Jew, Asaph, was the keeper. Pulpit Commentary.  So Asaph was duty bound, by the king's command, to cut trees out of "the paradise" to rebuild the walls and the gates of Jerusalem.

Nehemiah did not face that journey alone.  The king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me.  Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard. And it grieved them very much that there had come a man to seek the good of the sons of Israel. 2:9-10.  According to Josephus, Sanballat was "satrap of Samaria". Pulpit commentary. We learned earlier that the Samaritans had an inward hatred for the Jews and vice versa.

Under Nehemiah's leadership, the people of Judah again started rebuilding their "holy city".

Chapter 9 of the Book of Nehemiah is a "read-worthy" recap of the history of Israel from the time of Abram to the resettling of Judah after the Babylonian captivity.

78. Ezra

The Jews Return Home

When Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, in 606 BCE, the people were taken away captives.  When the first of them returned to Jerusalem, in 538, they returned as captives.  They were still subject to the king of Persia and they were escorted by the Persian army.   The total number of people who returned in the first expedition is 42,360;  30,143 of those could prove their lineage.

In the Book of Esther, we learn that Persia had 127 satrapies (provinces). Esther 1:1.  The words, these are the sons of the province, Ezra 2:1, tell us that, in a political sense, Judah was a province just like any other country that Persia ruled.  

In the seventh month of the year of their return, the people started rebuilding the altar on which to worship Jehovah.  In the second month of the second year they started rebuilding the temple, Ezra 3:8.

The ancient men who had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice.  It just did not measure up to their expectations or to the grandeur of Solomon's temple.  And many of the younger people shouted aloud for joy because they had a place to worship so that the people could not tell the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people. 3:12-13.

When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the sons of the captivity built the temple to Jehovah, the God of Israel, ... they came to Zerubbabel ... and said, ... let us build with you, for we seek your God, even as you. But Zerubbabel, ... said to them, You have nothing to do with us to build a house to our God. But we ourselves together will build to Jehovah, the God of Israel. Later Christ warned his disciples,  Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Mat.7:15.  

Just because the enemies know all the right religious words to use at the right time does not make them Christians.  We must always be careful not to let religious sounding people with low moral standards infiltrate the Christian community!

Troubles Will Come

Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building. And they hired counselors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. Ezra 4:1-5.  They even sent a letter to Cyrus stating that the Jews were building a walled city so that they would be in position for an uprising against the king, just like they had done earlier.  The king investigated and, sure enough, history fit the accusation, and so Cyrus sent an order for the Israelites to stop building their city.  So it ceased to the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia. 4:24.

However, the Israelites were not content to just be sitting around and not working on the temple, so they resumed the work without the king's permission.  This time Tatnai, governor of the province west of the Euphrates, ... came to them and said this to them, Who has commanded you to build this house and to make this wall?  They told him, Ask the king to look in the records and he will see that Cyrus gave us permission to finish the temple and the walls of the city.  Not only that, he promised to pay for it. 5:10-17.   By then Darius was king, and he did check the record and found the claim of the Israelites to be true.  He gave them the official "go ahead".

About 60-70 years pass and there is another new king in Persia, Artaxerxes; who is also known as Ahasuerus, in the story of Esther.  In the seventh year of this king's reign, Ezra led the second expedition from Babylon to Jerusalem.  He was a ready scribe in the Law of Moses, which Jehovah, the God of Israel had given. 7:6.

Ezra is the author of the book with his name, but it is not until 7:28 that he changes from speaking of himself in the third person to the personal pronoun.

At the end of these things, the rulers of Israel came to me, Ezra, saying, The people of Israel, ... have not separated themselves from the people of the lands. ... For they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons. So the holy seed has mixed themselves with the people of those lands. 9:1-2.  Ezra took this condemnation of the Israelites very seriously.  He said about himself, I tore my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down stricken dumb. 9:3.  It was not until the evening sacrifice that he was able to speak.

Not that long ago, in the Christian churches, we were told that Christians must not marry non-Christians.  Where is that message now?  Now "we," say, well, if she is honest, doesn't smoke or drink too much, you may marry her.  According to Christian theology, there is still a humongous difference between being "born again" and simply living a good life.  

There was a time when some pastors would not perform the marriage ceremony unless both, bride and groom, claimed to be born again.  These days that point seems to be insignificant to some preachers.  Those preachers should again read the last two chapters of the Book of Ezra.  The people of Israel ... have not separated themselves from the people of the lands. ... For they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons. So the holy seed has mixed themselves with the people of those lands.  With so many unequal unions, Christians married to non-Christians, in its membership, it is really no wonder that the church has lost its vitality!

Among the laws laid down by Moses we find this one; When Jehovah your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, ... You shall make no covenant with them ... Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter to your son. For they will turn away your son from following Me, so that they may serve other gods. Deu 7:3-4.

In that situation, it sounds like a racial thing, but actually, it was not.  It was not because they were a different race, but since they were a different race they also served different gods.  That is where the hang-up was.

In the Christian church, there is (should be) no argument against interracial marriages.  The hang-up is and must continue to be, do not marry those who do not share your basic beliefs, it leads to trouble if you are to remain true to your system of beliefs.

77. Cyrus Captures Babylon

King Belshazzar's Famous Feast

Belshazzar the king made a great feast (feasts of this nature were not over and done within one evening, they could go on for months at a time.  When Xerxes had one of these parties it lasted for a hundred and eighty days.) Esther 1:4.  That is for half a year! 

to a thousand of his lords.  It is believable that the number, "thousand" is an unspecified number which simply means very many; in the same way, we might use that number without bothering to count.  In this verse, one text says, two thousand men. Pulpit commentary. 

At that feast, Belshazzar mocked the religion of the Jews and blasphemed the God of Israel.  The king saw fingers writing on the wall; they wrote, you have been tested and you fall short of what is required.  Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians; ... Darius the Mede took the kingdom. In that night Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans was killed. Dan 5:28-31.

Cyrus, king of Persia 

The ancient name for modern Iran is Persia.  History books tell us that Cyrus, king of Persia, captured Babylon, but the Bible says, Darius the Mede took the kingdom.  This discrepancy is explained like this.  Darius was the king of Medo-Persia and he sent his nephew, Cyrus, of Media, to invade Babylon.  In a political sense, it was Darius who captured Babylon even though it was Cyrus who led the army.

Belshazzar is also known as Neriglissar or Niricassolassar.  He is said to be the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar.  Scholars insist that Babylon fell in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar's son, Nabonidus, not in the reign of Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar's grandson.  What we do know for certain is that in October 539, the Persian king, Cyrus, took Babylon and captured its king Nabonidus. Livius.org-Articles on Ancient History.  This discrepancy, however, need not bother us.  In the Bible, it is not unusual for a male descendant to be called the son of his grandfather.

In preparing to write this post I was trying to make some sense of the genealogy involved in the lives of these leaders.  Then I ran across this statement, The statements in regard to this monarch, it is well understood, are exceedingly confused, and the task of reconciling them is now hopeless. Barnes Bible Commentary.  That made me feel better.  Regardless of who is who, the moral and the spiritual lessons, in the Book of Daniel, remain unchanged.

If the king and his lords had not been so busy getting drunk, they would surely have noticed the Medo-Persian army rerouting the Euphrates and gathering at their gates.   If they had noticed what was going on, they could have taken action against them and probably saved their kingdom.  Not only that, but their situation, safe inside the walls of Babylon, was much more favourable than that of the invading army.  However, a thousand of his lords were in no condition to lead their legions into the fray.

The capture of the city was easy, but the aftermath of the battle appears to have been violent: the Nabonidus Chronicle uses the expression iduk, "to kill, to massacre" to describe what happened to the defeated. 

The Babylonian Empire had been large, and Cyrus, by capturing the Babylonian empire, now became ruler of Syria and Palestine as well. According to the Biblical book of Ezra, Cyrus allowed the Jews, who were exiled to Babylon, to return home. Livius.org-Articles on Ancient History.

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, (In 538 BCE: In the first year after he captured Babylon) Jehovah stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, ... saying, So says Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth have been given to me by Jehovah God.  As far West as Macedonia on the Aegean Sea and Libya which is West of Egypt; East all the way into India.  That is all the world that the ancients knew.  He has commanded me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is among you of all His people? May Jehovah his God be with him, and let him go up. 2 Chron. 36:22-23

These are the ones who came with Zerubbabel: Ezra 2:2.   Zerubbabel was the leader of the first of two such expeditions.  Cyrus, may not have been as benevolent as he seems.  He may have wanted the Jews to return to their homes in Judah so that they would be a buffer between the army of Egypt and Cyrus's home in Persia.  This may have been an attempt to fortify the empire's western border against possible Egyptian attacks. Livius.org-Articles on Ancient History.  Surely the Israelites must have thought that by living at home they could help keep the Egyptians from invading their country.

It was not until after Zerubbabel and his followers had settled in Judah and started rebuilding Jerusalem that Persia invaded and conquered Egypt.