Nehemiah 4:13 Commentary and Bible Study

Nehemiah intensifies the defences. ‘Therefore set I in the lower places, behind the wall’ – there were areas evidently where the wall had not been quite constructed to the halfway point. They might be seen as weak spots, where it was relatively easy to rush in. So there were positioned troops of men behind them. ‘And on the higher places I even set the people after their families with their swords, spears, and their bows.’ There is good psychology going on here. Nehemiah so arranges things that people were working in families; you can see this in chapter 3. The family of these men, the sons of these men worked on this part of the wall, the sons of these men on another part of the wall, so they were defending their own families. Soldiers were appointed where their own families working, so that they would be doubly motivated to protect them.