Opposition continues, Nehemiah’s behavior
6
📚Now it so happened that when Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem the Arabian, and the rest of our enemies, heard that I had built the wall, and that there was no gap left in it (though at that time I had not set up the doors of the gates), 2 📚Sanballat and Geshem sent word to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono 📖”. But they were planning to harm me.3 📚And I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?”
6:3 Nehemiah could not be diverted from the work God had given him to do. To him God’s work was noble and sacred, and demanded all his strength, time, and best efforts.⚜
4 📚Yet they sent me this same message four times; and I answered them in the same way.
6:4 Enemies of God’s work do not usually give up easily; neither should God’s servants.⚜
5 📚Then, in the same way, Sanballat sent his servant to me the fifth time with an open 📖 letter in his hand, 6 📚in which was written, “It is reported among the nations, and Gashmu 📖 says it, that you and the Jews are planning to rebel. For this reason, according to these words, you are building the wall, that you may be their king. 7 📚And also you have appointed prophets to make proclamations about you at Jerusalem, saying, ‘There is a king in Judah!’ And now it will be reported to the king according to these words. So come now, and let us take counsel together”.
8 📚Then I sent word to him, saying, “No such things as you say are being done, but you are making them up in your own heart”.
9 📚For they were all trying to frighten 📖 us, saying, “Their hands will be weakened in the work, so that it will not be done”. Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.
10 📚Afterwards I came to the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah the son of Mehetabeel, who was shut in, and he said, “Let us meet together in the house of God, in the temple, and let us shut the doors of the temple 📖, for they are coming to kill you. Yes, at night they are coming to kill you 📖”.
11 📚And I said, “Should such a man as I flee 📖? And who is there such as I who would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in”. 12 📚And then I perceived that God had not sent him, but that he pronounced this prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him.
6:12 Evidently Shemiah was a false prophet who was after money. Compare 2 Pet 2:15-16.⚜
13 📚The reason he was hired is that I might be afraid, and do so and sin, so that they might have material for an evil report, that they might reproach me.
14 📚My God, remember Tobiah and Sanballat according to these works of theirs, and the prophetess Noadiah, and the rest of the prophets who tried to frighten me.
6:14 False prophets were a problem in other days too. See Jer 5:31; 14:13-15; 23:9-17; Ezek 13:1-7. There will be false prophets in the future also – Matt 24:11, 24; 2 Pet 2:1.⚜
The wall completed
15 📚So the wall was finished in the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days 📖. 16 📚And it came about when all our enemies heard of this, and all the nations that were around us saw these things, that they were much deflated in their own eyes, for they perceived that this work was done by our God 📖.
17 📚Moreover, in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and letters from Tobiah were coming to them. 18 📚For many in Judah were under an oath to him, because he was the son-in-law of Shechaniah, the son of Arah, and his son Johanan had taken the daughter of Meshullam the son of Berechiah. 19 📚Also they reported his good deeds in my presence, and reported my words to him. And Tobiah sent letters to frighten me.
6:17-19 Tobiah, a great enemy of God’s work, had supporters among God’s people. Do such things ever go on in the churches today? Alas, yes.⚜