Nehemiah - Chapter 6
1-4:
PERSONAL ATTACKS TO DISTRACT NEHEMIAH
The rebuilding project had been moving ahead in spite of frustrating opposition: challenges from the outside as neighbors threatened Judah and challenges from within as internal strife threatened unity. Now the attacks are not just against the work but against Nehemiah himself.
The workers had almost finished the wall. All that remained was to hang the doors. Then Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem the Arab, who had opposed Nehemiah from the beginning, tried once more in desperation to derail the whole project. This time they chose a different tactic, they threatened Nehemiah personally.
At first view their invitation does not seem to bring danger. They proposed a meeting at the plain of Ono. Nehemiah quickly suspected ill will as he revealed he thought they meant to do him harm. The key to his understanding that this proposal was sinister was its location. Ono was 25 miles northwest of Jerusalem, a two day trip both ways and far enough away to make it easier for them to attack him away from his people. Even if his suspicions were not fully correct, the trip itself would bring him distraction away from the work.
Nehemiah declined the meeting with his words basically saying that he had a big job and needed to stay working on it. These enemies tried four times to lure Nehemiah away, and four times he declined. The persistence of his enemies did not overcome Nehemiah's resolve. He remained focused on the task at hand.
5-9:
NEHEMIAH IS LIBELED
Since Nehemiah refused to be distracted, Sanballat tried another approach to disrupt the work. He sent his servant into Jerusalem with an “open letter” containing two direct accusations (both untrue) against Nehemiah.
First, the letter said that Nehemiah intended to attack the Persians after he had completed building the strong wall.
Second, the letter said that Nehemiah himself had a plan to appoint himself king.
This letter was not primarily to inform the people but rather to incite disunity. Nehemiah quickly dismissed the claims as things Sanballat had invented in his own heart.
True to his character, Nehemiah then prayed for strength. There is no evidence that he penned a letter of defense or any written response to the attempts to discredit him. He simply stated the truth as he knew it, prayed, and moved on.
10-14:
ATTEMPTING TO DISGRACE NEHEMIAH
The next attempt to distract Nehemiah came from an obscure priest named Shemiah who was a secret informer to the enemies. It seems certain that he was hired by Sanballat and Tobiah to discredit Nehemiah.
Shemiah prophesied to Nehemiah saying that your enemies are coming to kill you, coming this very night. But the prophet had a plan to “save” his life. He proposed they both go to the temple and hide within the temple itself, to find safety next to the Holy place in the heart of the temple.
Nehemiah was not a priest and was therefore forbidden to enter the Holy place, and if he tried to do so he would have been disgraced in two ways:
First, Numbers 18:7 limits this place only to priests and any others who enter there are subject to the death sentence.
Second, by hiding to save his own life, Nehemiah would have been seen as a coward and therefore a poor leader for Judah.
Nehemiah rejected the false prophecy, saying that he knew God had not sent it to him and he had perceived that Sanballat and Tobiah had hired the priest. We see here how very low the enemies had sunk in their efforts to hinder Nehemiah and the work. This section closes with the revelation that Nehemiah knew even other priests had been hired to work against him as well.
15-16:
COMPLETION OF THE WALL
The wall was finished in the 25th day of Elul (our late September) and amazingly had taken only 52 days from start to finish. It was a testimony to the leadership of Nehemiah and we are told that it caused the enemies to be “disheartened”. Their attempts to stop the work had failed badly. The work had been done so quickly and in unity that even the opponents “perceived that this work was done by our God”.
17-19
OPPOSITION CONTINUES
Having completed the wall, Nehemiah quickly turns aside to consider the conspiracy that had taken place against him, especially the opposition of Tobiah. This clever enemy had influential connections within Judah, in part because he and his son had both married into influential Jewish families. A curious note is that Tobiah's son, Jehohnan, had married the daughter of Meshullan, who we met in 3:4 as a worker on the construction of the wall. This man worked to resolve the bitterness between Nehemiah and Tobiah but Nehemiah rejected this effort at diplomacy and verse 19 advises that Tobiah continued to send letters to him to try and frighten him. These two did agree one one thing, that their differences seemed, at least for now, beyond reconciling.