
So here Nehemiah is encountering something that often takes young leaders by surprise the first time it happens – opposition from within.
In Chapter 4 (and part of 6) Nehemiah and his team of builders were on the sharp end of opposition from next door. But you might expect all God’s people to be passionate about seeing God’s work progress, to see the wall be built. Not so!
Internal opposition to a project, and especially to God’s work comes in all sorts of colours. Sometimes it is explicit and direct, other times it is passive and much more sneaky.
The opposition that Nehemiah experienced here is of the passive and sneaky kind.
Nobles were behaving unethically and assuming that their behaviour was acceptable.
Here’s the situation
Nehemiah had brought with him some Jewish men from Babylon to help with the rebuilding of the wall and other civil engineering work in the city. Although the main wall was completed in record time (about 52 days) it’s clear that they stayed on for some considerable time to do the renovations within the city.
Then when a food shortage struck, things got very difficult.
Do you remember that (in ch 3) when the wall was being built, even the nobles of the city got their hands dirty and did some of the building.
The complaints
Not enough food (v1)
- Neh 5:1-2 Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their Jewish brothers.
- 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.”
We have to eat! Clearly the common people were suffering economic hardship and it was affecting their ability to provide for their families.
These were not people complaining that they couldn’t afford a holiday in the summer, they couldn’t afford to buy food to stay alive.
Borrowing (v2)
- Neh 5:3 Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”
They had acted out of necessity (in order to eat) and ended up in deep debt
Taxation
- Neh 5:4 Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards.
From archaeological records we estimate that the Persian king was extracting about 20million darics (the local currency) a year and almost none of it was being fed back into the local economy. This was usually in the form of gold and silver coin or artefacts and by Nehemiah’s time it was producing hardship.
Most of it was just melted down. When Alexander the Great invaded he found 340 tons of gold and bout 1500 tons of silver had been squirrelled away!
Unfairness
- Neh 5:5 Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our countrymen and though our sons 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.”
To grasp the severity of this situation you need to know this: If you borrow money (as a mortgage) to buy a house, you put up the house itself as collateral. In Nehemiah’s time you could put up people as collateral, because they could be worth something as servants or slaves. That’s what is happening here. If a man couldn’t repay the loan his children, his wife or even the man himself could be sold into slavery
- Because of their desperate situation these people were being caught by loan sharks.
- In Israel their rule was that if an Israelite had to sell himself into slavery, he should be released on the 7th year – the ‘jubilee’.
BUT the people who were the loan sharks here were fellow Israelites!
You may remember I said that Nehemiah has more journal-type material than other similar OT books. And here is a good example:
Nehemiah was an angry man.
So what made Nehemiah mad?
- The lack of food – probably
- the necessity to borrow – probably,
- the taxation – even more probably
but I think the clincher was the sheer inequity of it all!
- The Hebrew word is hard to translate but it means something like “Holding your fellow Jews as pledges for debt” (NEB)
And when he realised that fellow Israelites were fleecing the honest, hard-working people of the land, he just saw red!
- Neh 5:6 When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry.
This man was seething!
OK, so you’re a leader. And someone inside your organisation comes to you to protest about something. You hear what they have to say and everything within you revolts against the injustice of it all. In that moment what do you do?
- Lash out, fire somebody, send an angry e-mail – and make sure that the right people get circulated in on it so as to give it the maximum embarrassment factor?
Be careful with anger! It can have such destructive consequences is it’s not used wisely!
Here’s how Nehemiah reacted –
Nehemiah was a controlled man.
- Neh 5:7 I pondered them [the accusations] in my mind
he spoke to himself
Nehemiah had, under God, developed a vital skill for any Christian leader – to know what he was thinking and why before the thought could escape his control and run riot in his head!
- Modern psychology helps us here Capturing negative or unsettling thoughts before they take root and play themselves out in our thinking can help us to avoid the trouble that comes from reacting instantly.
- Paul said (2 Cor 10:5) We … take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. <ppt>
- He thinks before he acts. He reflects before he remonstrates,
And in that split second he probably realised that this extortion angered God more than it angered Nehemiah.
- You take the initial thought and you reason with it, you remonstrate with it, you don’t let it get away with creating a life of its own inside your mind
He adopted a good leadership strategy – first
he spoke to the people causing the hardship
- Neh 5:7 I pondered them [the accusations] in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials.
Nehemiah did not allow himself to be manipulated He is by this time very clear about what the issues are and who should be changing their behaviour.
- So he goes to see just them
- v7 … I told them, “You are exacting usury from your own countrymen!”
“extracting usury” is another hard to translate word – but it carries the idea of extortion. This is God’s people placing financial burdens on other people of God
and there is, at this point, no evidence that they took Nehemiah’s accusation on board or even acknowledged it
So Nehemiah finds it necessary to take the issue wider:
- v7 So I called together a large meeting to deal with them
and at this point the nobles could have relented and stopped the financial pressure – but they didn’t.
They may not like Nehemiah for raising the issue, but at least they know where they stand. Nehemiah is not being two-faced!
He called a meeting
He got the nobles and the people into the same room so that the nobles could see the consequences of their greed.
- 7 … I called together a large meeting to deal with them and said: “As far as possible, we have bought back our Jewish brothers who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your brothers, only for them to be sold back to us!”
So Nehemiah brought back from Babylon some Jewish brothers, let’s call one of the Amos
And having settled back in the land, near Jerusalem to help with the rebuilding, Amos finds himself in severe financial hardship – probably because of taxation – and now because of a lack of food and prices therefore going through the roof. Amos borrows to help his family eat but can’t repay and ends up selling himself as a slave. Slave Amos now has some value to his new masters (the Jewish nobles) who sell him at a profit to the other people with money, Nehemiah and his leaders.
Making an unjust profit from someone else’s debt – does that sound familiar?
- This is precisely the ethic that has got many nations, including our own, into such debt in the last decade.
Named and shamed
It seems that Nehemiah’s hope was that they would have compassion and relent. But they didn’t.
- 8 … They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say.
- 9 So I continued, “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?
What is it that really matters? It’s the reputation, the glory of God that really matters here. There is no way these people should find themselves exploited by their fellow Israelites. That’s wrong by itself
But the bigger picture is what this says to the nations around – the Gentiles. “What will they think of our God is this is the way we behave!?
- “No mercy! no compassion! What kind of Godliness is this guys!?”
- Neh 5:10 I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let the exacting of usury stop!
Usury is hard to translate, but it’s tone is the exploiting of cash-strapped people for personal gain.
So Nehemiah’s theology is very clear: Failure to relate others – especially other believers – with compassion – is an insult to our God himself
- Prov 14:31 He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honours God.
- 1 Pet 2:12-15 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
It’s a challenging message to Christians like us to take every opportunity we can to relieve genuine poverty and act with compassion when we get the chance.
Nehemiah was a decisive man
He asked for a decisive, binding commitment
- Neh 5:11-12 Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the usury you are charging them– …
- 12 “We will give it back,” they said. “And we will not demand anything more from them. We will do as you say.”
- Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised.
Nehemiah was wise in the ways of the rich and knew they could do the same again The greed-gene that got them where they were would not be changed by a simple hand-shake!
Nehemiah was a thrifty man
- Neh 5:14-15 Moreover, [for the 12 years I was governor of Judah] — neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor.
He had the right to a lavish lifestyle, and it was a right he relinquished. <PPT>
- 15 But the earlier governors — those preceding me — placed a heavy burden on the people and took forty shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people.
- But out of reverence for God I did not act like that.
Now Nehemiah is governor, his post entitles him to levy taxes – but he chooses not to.
When Jesus was on earth there was a moment when the disciples were arguing about who should be greatest
- Luke 22:25-30
- 25 Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.
- 26 But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.
… and here is Nehemiah living just like that!
Power always carries with it the temptation to exploitation (after all I’m the boss now) and corruption (no-one will notice a bit on the side, will they?)
He could have used his position to pander to his personal craving for pomp and luxury
It’s the glory, the reputation of God again!
- If God is going to be seen for who he is, He will be seen in Nehemiah’s words and actions!
- This is a man of integrity.
- He was a man with a vision from God – he worked staggeringly hard to see that vision become a reality and he did not exploit people in the process. That’s integrity!
Nehemiah was a prayerful man
He’s praying – again! And again this prayer tells us more about Nehemiah and gives us another dimension to his communication with the Lord.
- Neh 5:19 Remember me with favour, O my God, for all I have done for these people.
This soulnds as if he’s asking God to congratulate him for his doings. But this is not salvation by works
He’s saying ‘examine me!’, ‘Look at my behaviour – and grant me your favour as a consequence’
- Ps 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
(pray)