Nehemiah 2

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Nehemiah sent to Jerusalem

¹ And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence before. ² So the king said to me, "Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing else but sorrow of heart." Then I was very much afraid, ³ and I said to the king, "Let the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies desolate, and its gates are consumed by fire?" ⁴ Then the king said to me, "What is it you are requesting?" So I prayed to the Elohim of heaven. ⁵ And I said to the king, "If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, 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 a time. ⁷ Moreover I said to the king, "If it pleases the king, let letters be given to me for the governors beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, ⁸ and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel which belongs to the house, for the wall of the city, and for the house that I will enter." And the king granted them to me, according to the good hand of my Elohim upon me.

⁹ Then I came to the governors beyond the River and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent officers of the army and horsemen with me. ¹⁰ When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard of it, it displeased them greatly that a man had come to seek the welfare of the children of Israel.

The night inspection of the walls

¹¹ So I 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 Elohim had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem; and there was no animal with me except the animal on which I rode. ¹³ And I went out by night through the Valley Gate, toward the Dragon Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I examined the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and its gates, which were consumed by fire. ¹⁴ Then I passed on to the Fountain Gate and to the 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 valley and examined 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 was doing; nor had I as yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, or the rest who did the work.

Let us rise up and build

¹⁷ Then I said to them, "You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies desolate and its gates are burned with fire. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach." ¹⁸ And I told them of the hand of my Elohim which had been good upon me, and also of the king's words that he had spoken to me. And they said, "Let us rise up and build." So they strengthened their hands for the good work. ¹⁹ But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshem the Arab heard it, they mocked us and despised us, and said, "What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?" ²⁰ So I answered them and said to them, "The Elohim of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will rise up and build. But you have no portion, nor right, nor memorial in Jerusalem."

Notes

• 2:1 Nisan is the first month (Exodus 12:2), about March-April, so some four months had passed since Kislev (1:1), months Nehemiah spent in prayer. Both months are said to be in "the twentieth year"; the year may be counted here from the king's accession or from the fall, and the text does not explain. To come before the Persian king with a sad face could be dangerous, for the king's presence was to be a place of gladness (compare Esther 4:2, 11).
• 2:8 "The king's forest" is pardes, a word borrowed from Persian for an enclosed park or orchard; it appears also in Ecclesiastes 2:5 and Song of Songs 4:13, and through Greek (paradeisos) it became the word "paradise." "The citadel which belongs to the house" (birah) was a fortress beside the house of Yahweh; Hananiah is later named as its commander (7:2). "According to the good hand of my Elohim upon me" is Ezra's phrase (Ezra 7:9; 8:18): the king granted it, but Nehemiah gives the credit to Elohim.
• 2:10 Sanballat appears outside Scripture: a letter on papyrus written in 407 BC by the Jews of Elephantine in Egypt mentions "Delaiah and Shelemiah, the sons of Sanballat governor of Samaria," so he was most likely the governor of the province to the north. "The Horonite" probably means he came from Beth-horon (or possibly from Horonaim in Moab). Tobiah "the servant" may bear a title, an official in the king's service; he was an Ammonite with ties to leading families in Jerusalem (6:17-18; 13:4). "The welfare" (tovah) is literally "the good."
• 2:13 Nehemiah went out on the west side of the city by the Valley Gate, went south to the Dung Gate, where the city's refuse was carried out, and up the east side by the Fountain Gate (verse 14) and the valley of the Kidron (verse 15). The Dragon Spring (or "Jackal's Spring"; tannin can mean either) is not known for certain. In some places on the east slope the way was blocked, probably by fallen stones, so that his animal could not pass (verse 14).
• 2:19 Geshem (Gashmu in 6:6) was an Arab chief whose people held lands to the south and east of Judah. A silver bowl found at Tell el-Maskhuta in Egypt, from the late fifth century BC, names "Qaynu son of Gashm, king of Kedar," and many scholars think his father was this Geshem. So Nehemiah faced powers on the north (Samaria), the east (Ammon) and the south (the Arabs). Their charge of rebellion repeats the accusation that had stopped the work before (Ezra 4:12-16).
• 2:20 Nehemiah answers the charge of rebellion not with the king's letters but with Elohim: "Himself" (hu) stresses that the success will come from Him. "Right" here is tsedakah, usually "righteousness," used in the sense of a just claim; with "portion" and "memorial" it means that the adversaries had no share in Jerusalem, no lawful claim over it, and no place in its remembrance, much as Zerubbabel had answered in Ezra 4:3.

Nehemiah 1 · Nehemiah 3

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