Nehemiah Prays for His People

1 The words of ^(A)Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah.

It came to pass in the month of Chislev, in the ^(B)twentieth year, as I was in ^(C)Shushan^[a] the ^[b]citadel, ² that ^(D)Hanani one of my brethren came with men from Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. ³ And they said to me, “The survivors who are left from the captivity in the ^(E)province are there in great distress and ^(F)reproach. ^(G)The wall of Jerusalem ^(H)is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.”

⁴ So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

⁵ And I said: “I pray, ^(I)Lord God of heaven, O great and ^(J)awesome God, ^(K)You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love ^[c]You and observe ^[d]Your commandments, ⁶ please let Your ear be attentive and ^(L)Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and ^(M)confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father’s house and I have sinned. ^7 (N)We have acted very corruptly against You, and have ^(O)not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. ⁸ Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ^(P)‘If you ^[e]are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; ^9 (Q)but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, ^(R)though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’ ^10 (S)Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand. ¹¹ O Lord, I pray, please ^(T)let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who ^(U)desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”

For I was the king’s ^(V)cupbearer.

Nehemiah Sent to Judah

2 And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of ^(W)King ^[f]Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that ^(X)I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before. ² Therefore the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but ^(Y)sorrow of heart.”

So I became ^[g]dreadfully afraid, ³ and said to the king, ^(Z)“May the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when ^(AA)the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with ^(AB)fire?”

⁴ Then the king said to me, “What do you request?”

So I ^(AC)prayed to the God of heaven. ⁵ And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it.”

⁶ Then the king said to me (the queen also sitting beside him), “How long will your journey be? And when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him ^(AD)a time.

⁷ Furthermore I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given to me for the ^(AE)governors of the region beyond ^[h]the River, that they must permit me to pass through till I come to Judah, ⁸ and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest, that he must give me timber to make beams for the gates of the ^[i]citadel which pertains ^(AF)to the ^[j]temple, for the city wall, and for the house that I will occupy.” And the king granted them to me ^(AG)according to the good hand of my God upon me.

⁹ Then I went to the governors in the region beyond the River, and gave them the king’s letters. Now the king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me. ¹⁰ When ^(AH)Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite ^[k]official heard of it, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel.

Nehemiah Views the Wall of Jerusalem

¹¹ So I ^(AI)came to Jerusalem and was there three days. ¹² Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem; nor was there any animal with me, except the one on which I rode. ¹³ And I went out by night ^(AJ)through the Valley Gate to the Serpent Well and the ^[l]Refuse Gate, and ^[m]viewed the walls of Jerusalem which were ^(AK)broken down and its gates which were burned with fire. ¹⁴ Then I went on to the ^(AL)Fountain Gate and to the ^(AM)King’s Pool, but there was no room for the animal under me to pass. ¹⁵ So I went up in the night by the ^(AN)valley,^[n] and ^[o]viewed the wall; then I turned back and entered by the Valley Gate, and so returned. ¹⁶ And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I had done; I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, or the others who did the work.

¹⁷ Then I said to them, “You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies ^[p]waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be ^(AO)a reproach.” ¹⁸ And I told them of ^(AP)the hand of my God which had been good upon me, and also of the king’s words that he had spoken to me.

So they said, “Let us rise up and build.” Then they ^(AQ)set^[q] their hands to this good work.

¹⁹ But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us, and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? ^(AR)Will you rebel against the king?”

²⁰ So I answered them, and said to them, “The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build, ^(AS)but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem.”

The Wall Defended Against Enemies

4 But it so happened, ^(A)when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant, and mocked the Jews. ² And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish—stones that are burned?”

³ Now ^(B)Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “Whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall.”

^4 (C)Hear, O our God, for we are despised; ^(D)turn their reproach on their own heads, and give them as plunder to a land of captivity! ^5 (E)Do not cover their iniquity, and do not let their sin be blotted out from before You; for they have provoked You to anger before the builders.

⁶ So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.

⁷ Now it happened, ^(F)when Sanballat, Tobiah, ^(G)the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the ^[a]gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry, ⁸ and all of them ^(H)conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion. ⁹ Nevertheless ^(I)we made our prayer to our God, and because of them we set a watch against them day and night.

¹⁰ Then Judah said, “The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.”

¹¹ And our adversaries said, “They will neither know nor see anything, till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease.”

¹² So it was, when the Jews who dwelt near them came, that they told us ten times, “From whatever place you turn, they will be upon us.”

¹³ Therefore I positioned men behind the lower parts of the wall, at the openings; and I set the people according to their families, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. ¹⁴ And I looked, and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people, ^(J)“Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, ^(K)great and awesome, and ^(L)fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses.”

¹⁵ And it happened, when our enemies heard that it was known to us, and ^(M)that God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall, everyone to his work. ¹⁶ So it was, from that time on, that half of my servants worked at construction, while the other half held the spears, the shields, the bows, and wore armor; and the leaders ^[b]were behind all the house of Judah. ¹⁷ Those who built on the wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon. ¹⁸ Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built. And the one who sounded the trumpet was beside me.

¹⁹ Then I said to the nobles, the rulers, and the rest of the people, “The work is great and extensive, and we are separated far from one another on the wall. ²⁰ Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. ^(N)Our God will fight for us.”

²¹ So we labored in the work, and half of ^[c]the men held the spears from daybreak until the stars appeared. ²² At the same time I also said to the people, “Let each man and his servant stay at night in Jerusalem, that they may be our guard by night and a working party by day.” ²³ So neither I, my brethren, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me took off our clothes, except that everyone took them off for washing.

Conspiracy Against Nehemiah

6 Now it happened ^(A)when Sanballat, Tobiah, ^[a]Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall, and that there were no breaks left in it ^(B)(though at that time I had not hung the doors in the gates), ² that Sanballat and ^[b]Geshem ^(C)sent to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together ^[c]among the villages in the plain of ^(D)Ono.” But they ^(E)thought to do me harm.

³ So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?”

⁴ But they sent me this message four times, and I answered them in the same manner.

⁵ Then Sanballat sent his servant to me as before, the fifth time, with an open letter in his hand. ⁶ In it was written:

⁸ Then I sent to him, saying, “No such things as you say are being done, but you invent them in your own heart.”

⁹ For they all were trying to make us afraid, saying, “Their hands will be weakened in the work, and it will not be done.”

Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.

¹⁰ Afterward I came to the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was a secret informer; and he said, “Let us meet together in the house of God, within the ^[e]temple, and let us close the doors of the temple, for they are coming to kill you; indeed, at night they will come 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 Then I perceived that God had not sent him at all, but that ^(G)he pronounced this prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. ¹³ For this reason he was hired, that I should be afraid and act that way and sin, so that they might have cause for an evil report, that they might reproach me.

^14 (H)My God, remember Tobiah and Sanballat, according to these their works, and the ^(I)prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who would have made me afraid.

The Wall Completed

¹⁵ So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of Elul, in fifty-two days. ¹⁶ And it happened, ^(J)when all our enemies heard of it, and all the nations around us saw these things, that they were very disheartened in their own eyes; for ^(K)they perceived that this work was done by our God.

¹⁷ Also in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and the letters of Tobiah came to them. ¹⁸ For many in Judah were pledged to him, because he was the ^(L)son-in-law of Shechaniah the son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan had married the daughter of ^(M)Meshullam the son of Berechiah. ¹⁹ Also they reported his good deeds before me, and reported my ^[f]words to him. Tobiah sent letters to frighten me.