Nehemiah helps the poor

5 Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews. ² Some were saying, ‘We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.’

³ Others were saying, ‘We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.’

⁴ Still others were saying, ‘We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. ⁵ Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our fellow Jews and though our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.’

Further opposition to the rebuilding

6 When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it – though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates – ² Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: ‘Come, let us meet together in one of the villages^[a] on the plain of Ono.’

But they were scheming to harm me; ³ so I sent messengers to them with this reply: ‘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?’ ⁴ Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.

⁹ They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, ‘Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.’

But I prayed, ‘Now strengthen my hands.’

¹⁰ One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, ‘Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you – by night they are coming to kill you.’

¹¹ But I said, ‘Should a man like me run away? Or should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!’ ¹² I realised that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. ¹³ He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.

¹⁴ Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophet Noadiah and how she and the rest of the prophets have been trying to intimidate me. ¹⁵ So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days.

Opposition to the completed wall

¹⁶ When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realised that this work had been done with the help of our God.