Meet Nehemiah

You just never know who God is going to use. When you read through the Bible, you see Him using an endless parade of losers, cowards, weirdos, and goofballs. Don’t believe me? Let’s do a quick review. Take Noah. Before he “found favor in the eyes of God” (Gen 6:8), he was just part of the cesspool of sin that make the LORD regret ever creating man in the first place (Gen 6:5-7). Then there’s Abraham. Ah yes, Father Abraham. Most Bible scholars believe he was right there in Babel as the tower went up (Gen 11:1-9). Despite that, our gracious God promises to bless the entire world through his family (Gen 12:1-3). How does Abraham respond to God’s incredible blessing? By selling out his wife not once but twice in order to safe his own hide (Gen 12:11-13; 20:2). Don’t forget Moses. The Mighty Mo is a fugitive murderer (Ex 2:11-13). The list goes on and on and on. The big point here is that God is the Hero of the story. He specializes in selecting fools, weaklings, and the disenfranchised to prove that He’s the one behind it all (1Cor 1:27-29).  

Meet Nehemiah. When the curtain opens, our man is a slave in the royal palace. He tells us a little later that he’s a “cupbearer to the king” (Neh 1:11). If your a fan of “Downton Abbey,” Nehemiah would be one of the unnamed servants that works for the Crawleys. But his job puts him in the presence of the most important person on the planet. Before you know it, God is going to transform Nehemiah from a lowly member of the palace to a territorial governor. Where has God placed you? How can you use your position to leverage for His kingdom? We see that we’re about to read “the words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah” (v1). Our man Nehemiah’s name actually means “Yahweh comforts.” We need to remember that names are very important in the Bible. And this is the classic example. God is going to use Nehemiah to provide a boatload of comfort and encouragement to a group of people almost 1,000 miles away who on the verge of cashing in their chips. It tells us that he’s the “son of Hacaliah” (v1). We don’t have a clue who he is. But we’ll bet he’s one proud papa when it’s all said and done.

So what does it mean that these are “the words of Nehemiah” (v1)? Did he write this book? Most smart folks believe Ezra actually wrote the book that bears Nehemiah’s name. This is actually the sequel to Ezra. It takes place 13 years after the big breakup with the pagan hotties in his prequel (Ez 10:18-44). It’s probably important to know that Ezra/Nehemiah are one book in ancient versions of the Hebrew Bible. For some reason, Christians separated them in the third century. Think of Ezra more as the editor. These are Nehemiah’s words. Ezra simply compiled them and put them in order. This book contains a lot of Nehemiah’s personal records, his journal, and other official documents. The ESV Study Bible points out that it is made up of all sorts of interesting documents, such as general’s diary, governor’s report, civil record, management handbook, and memoir. Nehemiah covers only 13 years. But it’s incredibly important for a couple of reasons. First of all, it shows how God fulfills the prophecies He gave through Daniel and Malachi about rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Chronologically, this is probably the last book written before Jesus arrives. Famous last words are important!

The first thing the author does is check the calendar. This is like when a movie opens and the date appears on the screen for context. “Now it happened in the month of Chislev” (v1). He’s letting us know that we’re in the Hebrew month that corresponds to November/December. It’s winter. We also find out that this is “in the twentieth year” (v1). The twentieth year of what? During the reign of King Artaxerxes I. History tells us this Persian dictator ruled from 465-424 BC. That puts the opening scene somewhere around 445-444 BC. Persian empire was the world superpower at the time. Artaxerxes had a headlock on nearly the entire Near East. The Persian dictator ruled as far as Egypt, Greece, and Turkey to the west and to Pakistan in the east. Nehemiah also gives his location, “as I was in Susa the citadel” (v1). Susa was in what we now know as Iran. Archaeologists think this is one of the oldest cities in the world and was the royal winter palace. Remember, he’s already told us that it’s wintertime. Susa is also the location for Esther (Est 9) and gets an important mention in Daniel (Dan 8:2). 

That’s where we find Nehemiah. He’s a Hebrew house slave living in Persia. He’s one of the many Jewish people still living almost 1,000 miles away from Jerusalem as the result of their exile into Babylon nearly 140 years before. It seems that God’s chosen people chose to turn their backs on Him. As a result, He sent the pagan Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar to haul them off into 70 years of divine time out (2Ki 24:1-4; Dan 1:1-2). But after 70 years of captivity, Yahweh rolls up His sleeves and gets personally involved to get His people back home. In 538 BC, He taps King Cyrus of Persia to not only allow the Jews to return but to bankroll Zerubbabel as he leads several thousand Jews to return and rebuild the temple (Ez 1:1-2). In 458 BC, God orchestrates Ezra’s expedition to Jerusalem during the reign of King Artaxerxes. Now 13 years after Ezra the priest heads home, the LORD has one more mission in mind. And this one is going to be led by Nehemiah. Yeah, THAT Nehemiah. The cupbearer. 

Nehemiah’s just the next one in the line of rejects and losers God is going to use. What a great reminder in the awesome power and ridiculous grace of God. He rarely picks folks we would draft in the first round. All too often, He chooses folks who would never make anybody’s team. If you were a captain selecting your teammates on the playground, you would never dream of wanting these people. Here’s just a few that you may be familiar with. A bug-eating freak wearing animal skins (Mt 3:4). A teenage girl living in the backwater boondocks of Nazareth (Lk 1:16-33). Even the leader of a hit squad that hunts and kills Jesus’ followers (Acts 8:1-3; 9:1-9). So as the camera zooms in on the palace in Susa, it doesn’t focus on the king but the his servant.

Meet Nehemiah.