Nehemiah 2:6 Commentary and Bible Study

This is not Queen Esther; she was the queen of the preceding king, Ahasuerus, and the stepmother of the present king of Persia, Artaxerxes. ‘The king said unto me, the Queen also sitting by him, For how long shall thy journey be?’ Well, the answer is not recorded. Nehemiah simply says, ‘So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time.’ But we know that the time was twelve years. Whether that was the term he originally asked for, or whether he asked for a shorter term, and from Judah requested to have it extended – that we cannot say; we are not given those details, but it turned out to be twelve years initially that he was in Jerusalem.