The Pulpit Commentary on Nehemiah 4:1-6

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

Derision and devotion.

Not the first nor the last instance was this one here recorded of—

I. DEVOTION ASSAILED BY DERISION (Nehemiah 4:1-3). Sanballat and Tobiah were contemptuously angry when they heard that the Jews had actually begun to build: they "took great indignation, and mocked the Jews" (Nehemiah 4:1). "What do these feeble Jews?" said Sanballat (Nehemiah 4:2). "If a fox go up, he shall break down their stone wall," said Tobiah (Nehemiah 4:3), using the strongest language of derision. Here was

(a) fleshly strength, a thing of muscle and nerve, may despise the mind with which it competes; or

(b) material force (money, muskets, arms) the spiritual strength against which it is arrayed; or

(c) mere numbers, without truth and without God, the feeble band which is in a small minority, but which has truth, righteousness, God on its side. Very misplaced contempt, as time will soon show. Sanballat and Tobiah, in their superciliousness, used

II. DEVOTION BETAKING ITSELF TO ITS REFUGE (verses 4, 5). Nehemiah, as his habit was, betook himself to God. He could not make light of the reproaches, but, smarting under them, he appealed to the Divine Comforter. "Hear, O our God," etc. (verse 4). In all time of our distress from persecution we should

III. DEVOTION DRIVEN TO DO ITS BEST (verse 6). Under the inspiration of an attack from without, Nehemiah and his brethren went on with their work

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