Bible Commentary - Nehemiah 4

In this chapter, the enemies of the Jews begin to conspire against them, without success.

I think this is a really interesting chapter.  In broad terms, I want to discuss two patterns in this chapter.  The first is the pattern of attack; that is, the methods that Sanballat, Tobiah and their friends use to attack the Jews.  The second is the pattern of defense; what the Jews do in response to the attacks that they suffer.

The first attack is mockery and insults.  Sanballat and Tobiah mock and insult the Jews when sitting amongst their allies, but the words reach Nehemiah and the Jews (verse 5 makes this clear, that their words reached the builders and demoralized them).  The message is clear: the Jews are weak and they will not be able to complete the work of rebuilding the wall.  I think it’s really interesting that the way Sanballat tries to stop the Jews is by telling them they cannot succeed.  If he actually believed that, he wouldn’t have felt the need to do anything; the Jews would have simply failed on their own.  Ironically, the attack itself is proof that Sanballat himself believes the Jews are capable of accomplishing what they set out to do.

Nehemiah doesn’t have any particular response to this first attack; they simply continue building the wall.  The lesson is that certain kinds of attacks should not be engaged.  If Nehemiah had responded by going to speak to Sanballat or sending messages back to him, then first of all, it would have distracted Nehemiah from rebuilding the wall, and second, it would have created more opportunities for Sanballat to continue attacking in this way.  As someone who largely grew up on the internet, one of the first lessons I learned is that certain kinds of arguments simply can’t be won.  There are certain battles that you can only lose and the best thing to do is to not fight them.

It would be like Sanballat is saying, “the Jews are feeble and won’t succeed” and Nehemiah replies, “yes we will.”  What would that accomplish?  Are you really going to change Sanballat’s mind?  Is he someone that Nehemiah can reason with?  Through careful demonstration of their building progress to date, their careful organization, can you really convince Sanballat that the project will be successful?  It’s funny because the idea is so absurd.  Sanballat isn’t criticizing the Jews because he believes they will fail, it’s because he wants the Jews to believe they will fail.

We also have certain voices that cannot be reasoned with.  Sometimes these voices are external critics, other people, and other times they are internal voices, our own doubts and fears telling us that we are weak and we cannot succeed (not in a schizophrenic way… hopefully you know what I mean).  Sometimes there are opinions in life that we can reason with, where a careful argument and evidence can be worthwhile.  There are other opinions that nothing will ever change.  It is very important that we learn to tell the difference, so that we don’t spend our lives waging arguments and fighting battles that cannot be won.

After Sanballat hears about the Jews’ continued progress, he is very angry (again) and wages his second attack which was planning a physical attack against Jerusalem to kill the builders and stop the wall.  I think it’s interesting how often Nehemiah was told that Sanballat was planning an attack (ten times, according to v. 12).  If the Ammonites and Arabs actually wanted to attack Jerusalem, they probably would have been more secretive about it rather than tell the Jews in their neighborhood.  From this, it seems like scaring the Jews is still part of their plan, perhaps even a large part of their plan.

Verse 10 is an interesting interlude in the story because it shows that the criticism of Sanballat was starting to take root amongst the people of Judah.  They began repeating his words, saying that the strength of the Jews was failing, there is still a great task left to accomplish and finally that they would fail to rebuild the wall.  Nehemiah does not directly respond to this sentiment, and while the Jews are discouraged they do not stop building.

The first attack was mockery and criticism.  The second attack is fear and the threat of a real, physical attack.  Nehemiah’s responds to both, though again we do not see him addressing Sanballat himself but only the Jews.  It is clear once again that the battleground is mostly in the minds and hearts of the Jews, to keep them united and keep them working towards the goal of building the wall, as Nehemiah recognizes the futility of engaging with Sanballat.

In the previous chapter, I talked about how the wall could only be built through the unified effort of the whole Jewish community working together for the common good.  In this chapter, the majority of the attacks are designed to break that unity by either discouraging or scaring the Jews into stopping the work.  Nehemiah’s response, then, is to encourage the Jews, to keep them united and to keep them actively building the wall so that the work would not stop.

Nehemiah’s response is firstly to set guards.  Secondly, when he “sees their fear” (v. 14) he encourages the people by reminding them of the people they are fighting for.  If they were only building the wall for themselves, it would not be enough because the task was hard and long.  I think this is a powerful lesson that, weird as it may sound, we are capable of doing more if we do it on behalf of somebody else than if we are doing it for ourselves.  Nehemiah could have said, “fight for yourself, they will kill you if you don’t build this wall”; but he didn’t.  He said, you are building this wall and fighting this enemy to protect the people you care about.

Even though I think Sanballat was largely trying to work through fear, verse 15 establishes that setting guards “frustrated their plans”, which is interesting because he did such an absolutely awful job of keeping their plans secret.  So, I’m not entirely sure what they were hoping to accomplish but it suffices to say that Sanballat and his allies failed to stop the Jews, whether by violence or by threat.

Lastly, verses 16-23 presents the Jews standing with a hammer or tool in one hand and a sword in the other hand.  I think this is such a poignant image that I simply have to expound some kind of lesson or teaching from it, though I’m not sure exactly what.

All of the people in Jerusalem are carrying two identities at the same time.  One identity is that they are warriors.  Every man is armed and ready to fight at the moment of need.  The other identity is that they are builders, with each man carrying burdens or tools to build the wall.  As far as Nehemiah reports, the people never have to actually fight a battle against their enemies.  They are prepared to fight continually, but they have to fight only rarely (or never).  Meanwhile, they are constantly building.  In the same way, I think we need to keep our focus on always building, always creating new things, always building new ministries and building up the church.  We also need to stay constantly vigilant so we are ready in case someone or something tries to attack what we are building and stop the work.

In any case, the construction continues and Sanballat’s attacks are defeated.  This is not the end of the conflict, but in the next chapter Nehemiah takes on a new adversary, the nobles and wealthy men of Judah itself.