Nehemiah 13:15 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Nehemiah 13:15

Comments

The language is very suggestive. It seems to tell us that this was not a full-blown Sabbath market. It wasn't like weekday trading. This was a transgression that just affected a proportion of people, because if it had been full-scale trading in the streets and market activity, the record would surely not say, ‘In those days saw I in Judah some treading wine presses on the sabbath.’ This is something that isn't so obvious. The observant Nehemiah just noticed it as he moved about. ‘Just a minute. What's going on down that side street? What's going on here? They are trading. Wherever I look, just out of the way, off the main highway, I can see trading on the sabbath, and I can hear the vehicles, the carts, and the asses.’ So it wasn't quite the same scale of trading as on other days, but there was nevertheless a widespread violation of the sabbath day. Foodstuffs were being brought in from the fields, from the villages, and even foreigners were coming in to trade on the sabbath day. He mentions fish merchants from Tyre. They saw a great opportunity to make money from the Jews. They cared nothing about the religion of Israel.‘Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day?’ Nehemiah has to take this matter up, and you see the reasoning: ‘Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city?’ Jeremiah in his prophecy identifies this as a particular evil that would most certainly bring the judgement of God upon them, and it came almost at once in the captivity in Babylon. ‘Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath.’ So he acts, and he has the gate shut, and people stranded outside who were bringing their merchandise, and then eventually they are threatened with arrest, and they are so persistent that that is the only way Nehemiah can prevent all this and put a stop to it. Some evils are committed with great vigour and have to be met with great resolve.

Application

The keeping of the Lord’s Day has certainly declined in modern evangelicalism. Some say almost proudly, ‘I am not a Sabbatarian.’ We ask, ‘Why not?’ and the answers we get show so little sincere desire to be right by the Lord. What about you and me? Is there a brother or sister, who is very light towards the Lord's Day, very indifferent? They allow all sorts of things to take place? They go straight home and watch something utterly secular on the television. They don't take seriously the day of worship and service and devotion to the Lord. These declines are coming into Bible believing churches on all fronts, and we have to be very careful in our lives that we don't absorb any of these things.

We think of Nehemiah as a great man, a strong leader, but his prayer shows that he does not view himself in this way. He has a very lowly view of himself. He asks that God would remember him and he pleads for mercy and to be spared because he is conscious of his sin in spite of all that he has tried to do to introduce reforms in Judah.

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Nehemiah 13:15 Commentary and Bible Study