Nehemiah 5:9 Commentary and Bible Study

It comes across rather tamely in our translation – ‘Also I said, It is not good that ye do.’ Nehemiah is outlining the damage that their behaviour has caused. ‘Ought ye not to walk’ – significant words here – ‘in the fear of our God, because of the reproach of the heathen, our enemies?’ Now he is going to start speaking of their hardness of heart. They are the people of God, the returnees. There have been seventy years of captivity in Babylon. The nation has been so severely judged, and it is still in a sense under judgement, even though this remnant, this second remnant, has returned to Judah and Jerusalem. Are some now taking advantage of the poverty of others to make profit, and forgetting their testimony as a nation? Still things are not going well for them, and the Samaritans around them have the upper hand. Nehemiah is able to say to them, ‘Doesn't it make you think: that God has not extended his hand of blessing to you? You’re still a suffering people. You're still oppressed and in trouble, and there are marauding parties come into the city daily. There are all kinds of damage being done. Shouldn't this jolt you into fearing God who has punished you and our nation so much? Aren’t you afraid that discipline will return?’ That is his appeal to them. Then there is an interesting argument, but very significant. ‘I, likewise, and my brethren, and my servants might exact of them money and corn.’ That is because Nehemiah was entitled to increase the Persian tax to pay his own expenses and pay for his ruling household and his administration and all his services, but he didn't do so. Now they have got a governor there who sets an example, and is exercising his office, really at his own expense. Nehemiah appears to have been quite a wealthy person. He was obviously a very significant, if not the highest, official at Persian court under Artaxerxes, and it would have been normal for a man in his position to charge the people for his own office and services. But nevertheless he seems to be doing this entirely at his own charge. So on the basis of his example and the vote of the people and his authority as governor, he says: ‘Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive yards, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money,’ – the interest charged which had accumulated over time – ‘and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of them.’