Nehemiah 1:1-11
I sat down and wept
The news is one sentence: the wall broken down and the gates burned with fire. He mourns certain days, and the prayer that follows confesses his own father’s house before it asks for anything.
People of the Bible
Nehemiah
Cupbearer to a king, project manager by trade, and the only man in Scripture who prays between a question and his answer.
Nehemiah is the king’s cupbearer in Susa when his brother arrives with news from Jerusalem: the wall is broken down and the gates burned. He weeps, mourns, fasts and prays for days, and then waits four months for an opening. When the king notices his face and asks what he wants, he prays before he speaks, and then asks for leave, timber and letters. He inspects the wall at night without telling anyone, and rebuilds it in fifty-two days against constant interruption.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Nehemiah
- 01
- 02
Nehemiah 2:1-8
So I prayed to the God of heaven
Four months later the king notices his sadness. Sore afraid, he prays between the question and his reply, and then asks for a date, letters for the governors and timber from the king’s forest.
- 03
Nehemiah 2:11-18
The night inspection
He tells nobody what God has put in his heart and rides out by night to view the walls, until the beast cannot pass. Only afterwards does he say, come, let us build.
- 04
Nehemiah 4:6-23
A trowel and a sword
Half work and half hold spears from the rising of the morning till the stars appear. Every builder has his sword girded by his side, and the trumpeter stays beside Nehemiah.
- 05
Nehemiah 5:1-13
Restore to them this day
The crisis is internal: mortgaged fields and children sold into slavery among their own people. He is angry, calls an assembly, and gives back his own loans first.
- 06
Nehemiah 6:1-16
I am doing a great work
Four invitations to the plain of Ono, then an open letter alleging rebellion, then a hired prophet suggesting he hide in the temple. The wall is finished in fifty-two days.
Why it matters
Nehemiah is the most practical book in the Old Testament and the most quotable on getting a thing finished. Every household repairs the section in front of its own house. Half the men hold weapons while half build, and every builder has a sword at his side. Asked four times to come down and meet, he sends the same answer: I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down, why should the work cease while I leave it and come down to you.
17 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
