Nehemiah is one among many that God used to bring Israel back to their city and their temple worship after the seventy years of captivity. That is worth saying first, because it is the thing the book quietly insists on.

Remember who else God had already used. He used Cyrus, who did not believe in Him at all. He used devout men of faith — Zerubbabel, Joshua and Ezra. He used the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Now He uses Nehemiah, an Israelite holding high office in the court of Persia, with the help of a pagan king, Artaxerxes.

A relative visits, and a burden begins

The book opens with something completely ordinary: a brother arrives from Judah, and Nehemiah asks him how things are. “They told me, “Those who survived captivity are in the province.” (Nehemiah 1:1-4).

Notice God in the little things. The visit of a relative is what laid the burden on Nehemiah that ended in the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Great happenings often hinge on what look like chance events.

And notice what he does with the burden. He does not immediately act on it. He weeps, fasts, and prays — for four months, as the dates in the book show. God alone can bring to pass the longings He places in our hearts. Every burden should lead us to the helpless position of prayer: the One who gives the burden is the One we then look to as the source of its accomplishment.

The favour of God on a pagan king

Nehemiah was cupbearer to Artaxerxes, which meant he drank the king’s wine first in case it was poisoned. It was a position of absolute personal trust.

Watch how he tracks God’s favour through the whole exchange:

• 1:11 — he asks God to work in the mood of the king before he ever opens his mouth: “make this man, King Artaxerxes, show me compassion.”
• 2:5 — in naked faith, he asks for what he prayed for.
• 2:8 — he credits the result to nothing else: “The king let me have the letters, because God was guiding me.”

And in between those, one of the shortest and best-placed prayers in Scripture “What do you want?” the king asked me. So I prayed to the God of heaven, and I asked the king…” (Nehemiah 2:4-5).

Between the question and the answer, he prays. This man prays without ceasing — not as a discipline he keeps but as the way he is.

The favour God gives to one of His children can make a pagan authority smile and hand over everything needed to accomplish God’s purpose. That was true under the old covenant. Under the better new covenant, we can ask and expect God’s favour in all that we touch.

He looks before he speaks

Arriving in Jerusalem, Nehemiah tells nobody anything. He goes out at night and inspects the ruined wall alone (2:11–16). Only then does he speak — and when he does, he already has a plan and the people are ready to start the same day. “You see the trouble we’re in. Jerusalem is in ruins, and its gates are burned down.” (Nehemiah 2:17-18).

Study how this man always gathers the facts and then acts out of inner stillness. Out of the quiet comes the strategy.

And when he is challenged, he does not argue. He states it “The God of heaven will give us success,” I answered them.” (Nehemiah 2:20).

Faith can afford to speak with quiet confidence, because it knows.

Six kinds of opposition, and one response

What follows is the heart of the book, and the reason to study it closely. The attacks come one after another and they never repeat themselves:

In every one of them he overcomes the same way: a constant attitude of prayer, and confident expressions of faith, refusing to compromise and refusing to act out of fear. Even his anger, when it comes (5:6), is under the control of the Spirit — and that self-government is the driving power behind his success.

Note too that the hardest attack came from inside. In chapter five it is not the enemy at all but Judah’s own nobles, and the complaint is economic.

“We’ve had to mortgage our fields, our vineyards, and our homes in order to get some grain because of this famine… we have to force our sons and daughters to become slaves. Some of our daughters have already become slaves. But we can’t do anything else when our fields and vineyards belong to others.”

Nehemiah 5:3–5 · GOD’S WORD Translation

Men were mortgaging their land to buy food, borrowing to pay the king’s tax on that same land, and selling their children into slavery to their own countrymen — while the wall was being built. Nehemiah’s answer is not a sermon. He calls an assembly, tells the nobles to stop charging interest and to give back the fields, the vineyards, the olive groves and the houses that day, and then makes the priests take their oath on it (5:10–12).

Then he puts his own conduct on the record. Twelve years as governor, and he never drew the food allowance the office entitled him to — “Those who were governors before me had made life difficult for the people… But I didn’t do that, because I feared God” (5:14–15). He fed a hundred and fifty men at his table daily and paid for it himself, “because these people were already carrying a heavy load” (5:18).

Fifty-two days

The wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month of Elul. The wall took 52 days to finish. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence. They realized we had done this work with the help of our God.

Nehemiah 6:15–16  ·  God’s Word

A ruin that had lain open for well over a century, walled in under continuous harassment, in fifty-two days — and the enemies themselves drew the right conclusion about who had done it.

Make a special study of how he achieved it. The principles will work for you in whatever situation you are in. However great the mountain in front of you, this book is about a man who prayed, planned, organised, refused to be frightened, and finished.

The book is read aloud, and explained

Then the tone changes completely. The wall is up; the people gather; and Ezra brings out the Law. “From daybreak until noon, he read from it in the courtyard in front of Water Gate to the men, women, and children who could understand it.” (Nehemiah 8:3).

They read the Book of God’s Teachings clearly and explained the meaning so that the people could understand what was read.

Nehemiah 8:8  ·  God’s Word

And the people’s response to understanding it is not what you would expect. They weep — and are told to stop “Today is a holy day for the Lord. Don’t be sad because the joy you have in the Lord is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10).

Responding to God’s Word with obedience brings great joy. The chapters that follow are repentance, a renewed covenant, and the dedication of the wall — and the dedication is a holy noise of celebration, worth reading for the sheer volume of it (12:27–43).

The man himself

Take a long look at Nehemiah as an individual walking with God — both in rebuilding the city and afterwards, as its governor under a foreign king. He emerges as a humble man, ordered by truth; highly organised and disciplined; a leader of people; and above all devoted to God and His ways. A study of his character will repay whatever you put into it.

The book reads the way it does because of where it came from. It is taken from Nehemiah’s private memoirs, and it has the dynamic style of the daily notes of an eyewitness — which is why the prayers are so short and so frequent, and why he keeps telling you what he was thinking at the time.

It does not end tidily. The last chapter has him returning after an absence to find the Sabbath being traded away and the covenant quietly eroding, and confronting it all over again (13:15–17). Reform is not a thing you accomplish once.

Where to go from here

Read the text itself: Nehemiah 1–2 for the burden and the prayer, then chapter 8 for the reading of the Law. About twelve minutes for both.

Read next: Esther — the same empire, a generation earlier, and a book in which God is never once named.