What Is the Book of Nehemiah About? A Wall Built in Fifty-Two Days

Nehemiah is a rare thing in scripture: a project record. It covers something very concrete — Jerusalem's wall had lain in ruins for decades, one man went back, and it was standing in fifty-two days.

His day job

Nehemiah was cupbearer to Artaxerxes, king of Persia (1:11) — a senior court position involving tasting the king's wine.

He was not a priest, a prophet or an engineer. He was a man with a good, stable job who wept when he heard his home city's wall was down (1:4).

What he did first

The sequence is worth noting: he wept, fasted and prayed for four months (1:1 is Chislev; 2:1 is Nisan).

Then, standing before the king, 2:4 records a small and very interesting detail. The king asks what he wants, and "So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said unto the king…" — an instant prayer inserted mid-conversation.

Prayer appears more than a dozen times in this book and never replaces action. Straight after praying he makes specific requests: how long he needs, which letters of passage, how much timber.

Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night.Nehemiah 4:9 (KJV)

How the opposition escalated

Sanballat and Tobiah's opposition rises in stages, and reads remarkably modern:

First ridicule (2:19) — "will ye rebel against the king?"
Then contempt (4:3) — "if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall."
Then threat of force (4:8).
Finally an invitation to negotiate (6:2) — "come, let us meet together in the plain of Ono."

His answer to that last one became famous: "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease?" (6:3)

Sword and trowel

4:17 is the book's best-known image: "every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon."

Worth pairing with 4:9 just before it: "we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them." Prayer and posting a guard are two actions in one sentence.

The list nobody should skip

Chapter 3 is an entire chapter of who repaired which section, and it reads as dry. Look closely and you find apothecaries, goldsmiths, merchants, priests — and "Shallum… he and his daughters" (3:12).

This was not a professional crew. It was a city where each household repaired the stretch outside their own door. 3:28 — "the priests repaired, every one over against his house." That is the secret of the fifty-two days.

After the wall

From chapter 7 the focus shifts: the wall is finished, the people are not. Chapter 8 has Ezra reading the law while the people stand from morning until midday; chapter 9 is confession; chapter 13 has Nehemiah return to find the old problems back.

The book does not give a tidy ending, which is part of its honesty.

Read Nehemiah in the BiblePro app, and give chapter 3 a proper read. And do look for a local church to read alongside others.