Chapter 7: Come Down

The wall was nearly complete. Only the gates remained to be set in place. Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem knew their window was closing, and they turned their attention directly to Nehemiah himself.

Sanballat and Geshem sent him a message.

SANBALLAT AND GESHEM“Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.”— Nehemiah 6:2

Nehemiah saw through it immediately.

NEHEMIAH“I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?”— Nehemiah 6:3

They sent the same invitation four times. Nehemiah gave the same answer four times.

The fifth time, Sanballat changed tactics. He sent an open letter, unsealed so that anyone who handled it could read its contents. The letter accused Nehemiah of planning to revolt against Persia and set himself up as king. It claimed he had appointed prophets to proclaim in Jerusalem, "There is a king in Judah!" And it warned that this report would reach King Artaxerxes.

Nehemiah sent his reply back. "Nothing like what you are saying is happening. You are just making it up out of your head." And in private, he prayed to God. "Now strengthen my hands."

Then a man named Shemaiah, living inside Jerusalem, claimed to have a prophetic warning for Nehemiah.

SHEMAIAH“Let us meet in the house of God, inside the Temple, and let us close the doors, because men are coming to kill you. By night they are coming to kill you.”— Nehemiah 6:10

Nehemiah was not a priest. If he entered the inner Temple, he would violate God's law and lose all credibility before the people.

NEHEMIAH“Should a man like me run away? Should someone like me go into the Temple to save his life? I will not go!”— Nehemiah 6:11

Nehemiah perceived that God had not sent Shemaiah. Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him to make Nehemiah afraid, to make him sin, and to give them a reason to discredit him.

None of it worked. On the twenty-fifth day of the month of Elul, the wall of Jerusalem was finished. Fifty-two days from the first stone laid to the last gate set in place. When the surrounding nations heard, they lost their confidence. Scripture records why. "They realized that this work had been done with the help of our God."