Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Nehemiah · About this commentary
The Wall Finished in Fifty-Two Days
Nehemiah 6:10-19
10 I went to the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home; and he said, “Let us meet together in God’s house, within the temple, and let’s shut the doors of the temple; for they will come to kill you. Yes, in the night they will come to kill you.” · WEB
The last weapon tried is a hired prophecy, and the wall's completion is dated in a subordinate clause while the letters keep coming.
The final attempt is the subtlest, because it comes wearing religion. Shemaiah — shut in at his home, a detail suggesting prophetic theater — delivers his oracle: let us meet together in God's house, within the temple, and let's shut the doors... for they will come to kill you. Yes, in the night they will come to kill you.
The trap has two teeth. A governor hiding in the sanctuary would confess cowardice to the whole province — should a man like me flee? And a layman entering the temple proper would sin against the sanctuary's own law; Nehemiah names both: who is there that, being such as I, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in.
Then the discernment, and the memoir shows its working: I discerned, and behold, God had not sent him... Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. The test was not the message's plausibility — assassination was plausible — but its direction: a word urging God's servant to sin for safety's sake identified its own sponsor. The purpose is spelled out: that I would be afraid, do so, and sin, and that they might have material for an evil report. Hired prophecy, and not only his — the prayer that follows names the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets that would have put me in fear Nehemiah 6:14. The opposition had a religious wing, and it was plural.
And then, almost buried, the sentence the whole first half of the book has been building toward: so the wall was finished in the twenty-fifth day of Elul, in fifty-two days.
Fifty-two days, stated without one word of celebration — the fanfare is left to the enemies: all the nations that were around us were afraid... for they perceived that this work was done by our God Nehemiah 6:16. The verdict the builders never spoke is extracted from their adversaries.
But the chapter refuses to end clean, and its last verses are the book's most uncomfortable disclosure: the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and Tobiah's letters came to them — for he was son-in-law to one leading family, his son married into another Nehemiah 6:18. Judah's own aristocracy praised Tobiah to the governor's face and reported the governor's words back. The wall kept out armies. It could not keep out in-laws, and the book's last chapter will find Tobiah living inside the temple itself Nehemiah 13:5.
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