Nehemiah 13:14 Commentary and Bible Study

Nehemiah was constantly in prayer; every new trial he faced with prayer to God. Here he is asking God for the preservation of his reforms. ‘Oh Lord, these people are so unstable. Establish my reforms for the godly. Keep them in place.’ That seems to be more the spirit of the prayer, the cry, that he utters. So the sin of bringing in Tobiah brings about the cessation of worship. It disobeys God expressly by putting an Ammonite into the house of God. It shows complete indifference to the law of God. We surely want to try to get into the mind of Eliashib. How can we explain it? He knew that Nehemiah would return. Didn’t he fear this? Whatever did he think? Didn't he fear God? Didn’t the history of Israel caution him: that for these very kinds of things the various great judgement had come upon them and the seventy years in Babylonian captivity. They hadn’t long been free from it. How was it that he managed to think, ‘I won’t be in any trouble for doing this. This is to my advantage’? It would be easy to say that he just wasn't a true believer, that he had no real respect for God. People can get into high positions in Zion, in the church of God, without actually having any spiritual sympathy or real spiritual life. But supposing he did have spiritual life. After all he had been trusted previously by Nehemiah. He had been trusted previously by Ezra and others. Supposing he did have some spiritual light in him. What happens in a person that they can come to be so unfaithful? Perhaps they are persuaded that there is much advantage offered them. There is something in it for them. But it is also failure of faith. ‘I am not afraid. I don't think God will judge us for this. I think our forebears must have done much worse things than this. I don't think God would have taken the trouble to bring us all the way back to Jerusalem, if he was going to uproot us so quickly. So this will be all right. I can push against the rules.’ He had ceased to be a person, whatever his faith, who really lived with the Lord and kept that faith and fear of him in his life.