Here he examines in the moonlight the ma.s.ses of fallen stonework, the small portions of wall still standing, and the gap where the gate used to stand before it was burnt.
Then on he went until he came to the Gate of the Fountain, opposite the King"s Pool, or Pool of Siloam, which watered the king"s garden. But at this south-east corner the rubbish was so great that the mule he was riding on could not proceed. Pile upon pile of stone, heap upon heap of broken fragments of what had once been so magnificent, lay so thickly ma.s.sed together that it was of no use attempting to ride further. So Nehemiah dismounted, and probably leaving his mule with some of his companions by the Gate of the Fountain, he went on foot a little further. Going up the Kedron valley he examined the eastern wall, which was in much better condition than the rest; and then, turning to the west, he came back to the rest of the party and returned with them to the Valley Gate.
Now Nehemiah has seen the work before him, and has realised that it is both vast and difficult. He is ready now to put his scheme before the people of Jerusalem. He finds the city governed by no single man, but by a kind of town council. He now summons a meeting of these rulers, and he also invites the n.o.bles and the working men to be present. Then he makes his appeal:
"Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach."
Then, to cheer them on to make the effort, he tells them how G.o.d has helped him up to that point; he tells them what the good hand has done for him already in opening the king"s heart and the king"s purse.
What response does he meet with? As one man that large a.s.sembly rises and joins in the cry, "Let us rise up and build." Happy Nehemiah to find such ready help, to find those he speaks to willing at once to fall in with his scheme, and to aid him in his work.
It is to be feared that had he lived in our more cautious and calculating days, Nehemiah would have had many a bucket of cold water thrown on him and his plan. One would have risen and would have said, "The work is too hard, the heaps of rubbish are too great, it is impossible to undertake such a task. Look at the south-east corner, who will ever be able to clear away the heaps that have acc.u.mulated there?"
Another would have been sure to grumble at the expense, would have asked how they, poor down-trodden Jews as they were, could ever afford to give time or money to such a vast undertaking?
A third would have risen with a long face, and would have asked, "What will Sanballat say if we rebuild the wall? What will Tobiah do? What will Geshem whisper? Now indeed we have no open rupture with the governors, but who can tell what the result of our taking action in this matter will be? Surely it is better to let well alone."
A fourth would have given as his opinion, that what had served for 150 years would surely last their time. True, Jerusalem was forlorn and defenceless, but they had grown accustomed to it now. It struck Nehemiah, of course, coming as he did fresh from the glories of Shushan, but they had become used to it, and he would soon do the same. There was no need surely to make a disturbance about it or to run into any risk about it.
A fifth would have suggested, with some warmth, that surely old inhabitants of the city were better judges of its requirements than a stranger, and that it was for the town council to propose such a scheme if they saw the necessity for it, and not for a new-comer who had been less than a week in Jerusalem.
These, and countless other objections, might have been raised, had the meeting been called in our lukewarm days.
But the Jerusalem committee did not act thus, they did not fill Nehemiah"s way with difficulties and his soul with discouragement. A plain bit of work lay before him and before them; he was ready to lead, and they were ready to follow. "Let us rise and build," they cry. And "they strengthened their hands for this good work."
Let us take heed that we, as servants of Christ, follow their example.
Let us never be seen with the bucket of cold water, ready to throw on the efforts of others for good. As "iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Let us ever be ready with the word of encouragement, with the helpful hand, with the cheering spirit of hope. There is work for us amongst the ruins of G.o.d"s fair world, and the labourers are few.
Let us then rise and build, each of us in earnest, each of us encouraging his brother, each of us looking beyond the discouragements of earth to the Master"s "Well done good and faithful servant."
CHAPTER IV.
To Every Man his Work.
Once a year, in the University of Cambridge, there is a grand day called Commemoration Day. On that day, in the middle of the service, in each college chapel a list of honours is read out, a list containing the names of all those who, in times gone by, gave money or help to that college. The bodies of those whose names are read have many of them crumbled to dust long centuries ago, but their names are remembered still, remembered for what they have done; and that they may never be forgotten, they are publicly read aloud, year by year, on the great Commemoration Day.
Let us now take up G.o.d"s honour list, and see who are entered upon it.
We shall find it filled with the names of those who have been dead more than 2000 years, but whose names are not forgotten; they stand out fair and clear in the Book of G.o.d, all are entered on the great list of honours, and are remembered for what they have done.
Where shall we find G.o.d"s great honour list? It is the list of all those who responded to Nehemiah"s appeal, and who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. In Neh. iii. we have a list of their names, not one is omitted. There those names have stood for 2000 years; there they will stand to the end of time. Brave men, n.o.ble men were those Jews, who, as soon as the scheme was laid before them, cried, "Let us arise and build;" and who not only responded by word of mouth, but who at once set to work to do what they had promised.
Let us take a walk round the walls of Jerusalem and watch the builders at work. We will begin where they began, ver. 1, at the Sheep Gate on the east side of the city. As we stand by the gate we see beneath us the Kedron valley, and beyond it the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Close by us, but inside the city, is the sheep-market, where the sheep and lambs are sold to those who wish to sacrifice in the temple, and near this market is the pool where the sheep are washed before being led up into the temple courts. This is the pool mentioned in John v. 2, where in later times lay the impotent man waiting to be healed.
Who are these who are busily engaged repairing the Sheep Gate and the wall beyond it; they are the priests, who have left their work in the temple courts close by, and who, with their loins girded and their long white tunics turned up, are leading, as it was right they should, the van of Nehemiah"s effort.
Heading these priests, and superintending their work, is Eliashib the high priest. The meaning of his name is _G.o.d restores_, a grand name for the man who began the restoration of the Holy City. This Eliashib was the grandson of the high priest Jeshua, who had returned with Zerubbabel. He is honourably mentioned by Nehemiah as leading the way in this work; but, sad to say, though he earnestly built the wall round the city, Eliashib was afterward the one who let sin come within those very walls.
The priests are building from the Sheep Gate as far as the two towers, Meah and Hananeel, which stood at the north-east corner of the city.
We pa.s.s on, and next we see a number of men building; we notice at once, by their dress, that they are not priests, so we ask them where they come from. We find they are men of Jericho, the city of palm trees, fourteen miles away in the Jordan valley. They are the descendants of the 345 men of Jericho who returned with the first detachment of Jews in the time of Cyrus. This piece of the wall has been allotted to them because it faces their own city Jericho; they are building at the very spot from which the road started that led from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Pa.s.sing the Jericho men we come to a bit of the wall where one solitary man is working. His name is Zaccur. He can only have a small piece of the wall allotted to him, for we are close now upon the Fish Gate, where other builders are at work, the sons of Ha.s.senaah. Possibly this Zaccur was a man of no importance, for we never hear of him again; probably his share of the work was only a small one, yet it was well and faithfully done, and his name stands fast in G.o.d"s honour list, and will stand there while the world shall last.
We have come now to the Fish Gate, on the north side of the city. Close by us is the fish-market, for through that gate comes all the fish sold in Jerusalem. Men of Tyre are there with baskets of fish from the Mediterranean, and Galilean fishermen with fish from the great inland sea, on which in later times the apostles toiled for their daily bread.
Three men, who were probably well-known citizens, are repairing the three next pieces of the wall, their names are Meremoth, Meshullam, and Zadok. We will notice one of these three men, Meshullam, for we shall hear more of him presently. If Meshullam"s name is honourably mentioned here as one of the builders of Jerusalem, we shall find it very differently mentioned as we go on with Nehemiah"s story.
Pa.s.sing these three men, we come to a part of the wall which is being built by the inhabitants of Tekoa, a small village not far from Jerusalem, whence came the wise woman whom Joab sent to King David. What is the matter at this part of the wall? The work does not get on as it should. They seem to have no leaders, these people of Tekoa, and to have a long stretch of wall, and but few hands to build it. We ask how this is, and we find that some in Tekoa have shirked the work (ver. 5):
"Their n.o.bles put not their necks to the work of their Lord."
They have been like oxen, too idle to draw the plough, which have pulled their necks from under the yoke, and have stubbornly refused to go forward. So have these n.o.bles of Tekoa stood aloof, too proud to work side by side with the common people of the village, or too idle to join in anything which requires continuous effort; they have left their poorer neighbours to bear the burden alone, and to do it or not as they please.
We are now pa.s.sing the Old Gate, on the north of the city, the Damascus Gate of modern days, from which goes the great northern road to Samaria and Galilee.
The men of Gibeon and Mizpah, whose villages lay near together, we find next on the wall, working side by side as neighbours should, and building the part of the wall which faced their own homes, two villages standing on the hills about five miles from the northern gate.
Coming round the city we find ourselves pa.s.sing the Gate of Ephraim and the Broad Wall. Here we see no workmen, for that part of the wall does not need repairing. Uzziah, King of Judah, had built a strong piece of wall here, about 200 yards long, and the Chaldeans had not been able to destroy it with the rest of the city. This wall was twice the thickness of the rest, and was always called the Broad Wall.
Near this wall we find men of two different trades working, goldsmiths and apothecaries. Trades in the East are almost always hereditary, pa.s.sing down from father to son for many generations. Thus these goldsmiths and apothecaries were joined together in family guilds or unions, and came forward together to the work. The apothecaries were the spice makers, important persons in the East, where spices are so largely used in cooking, and where so many sweet-smelling and aromatic spices are employed in embalming the dead.
Then, pa.s.sing on, we see the tower which protected the furnaces or brick kilns, in which the bricks were made which had been used in rebuilding the houses of the city. So unsettled was the country, that it is supposed it was found necessary to erect a tower for the defence of these brick-makers, who were often at work by night as well as by day.
Close to the furnace tower we see a strange sight, and one which is well worthy of our notice. This part of the wall deserves our earnest attention, for here are actually young ladies engaged in the work, standing, trowel in hand, toiling away side by side with the other workmen. Who are these girls? They are the daughters of Shallum, the ruler of the half part of Jerusalem (ver. 12) (or rather of the country round Jerusalem). Shallum was evidently a wealthy and influential man, but he did not withdraw from the work, like the n.o.bles of Tekoa, and so anxious are his daughters that the Lord"s work should be done, that here we find them toiling away by their father"s side. G.o.d noticed the effort made by these young ladies of Jerusalem, and did not forget to notice them in His great honour list.
Pa.s.sing on, we come to the part of the wall which Nehemiah had examined in his moonlight ride. We see the Valley Gate, the Dung Gate, and the Gate of the Fountain, opposite the Pool of Siloam. This part of the city has suffered much from Nebuchadnezzar"s work of destruction, and the work of rebuilding it is therefore very heavy. But close to the south-east corner, at the place where Nehemiah"s mule stumbled and was unable to proceed, the builders have a stiff piece of work indeed. The piles of rubbish are so many and so deep, there is so much to be cleared away before they can commence building, that we find accordingly the piece given to each man to repair is not great, and that many hands are making the labour light.
We notice, too, that most of those who are working in this part of the city are repairing that bit of the wall which is immediately opposite their own houses. No less than six times we are told that the builder"s own house was close to the part of the wall he built.
One man we cannot help watching as we turn round towards the eastern wall. His name is Baruch, and there is something about him which attracts our attention at once. He works as if he were working for his life, he does not lose a moment; whoever is absent, Baruch is always at his post; whoever is idle, Baruch is ever hard at work, early in the morning and late at night, when the hot sun is scorching the city and when the night dews are falling, Baruch is always busy, toiling away on the wall with all his might and main. Ver. 20 tells us he "earnestly repaired." The word means to be hot, to be on fire with zeal and energy.
He "earnestly repaired the _other_ piece," or as it would be better translated "_another_ piece." Having finished his own portion, in another part of the wall, Baruch has come to the rescue at the south-east corner, where the rubbish is deepest and the work is hardest.
Baruch therefore receives the mark of distinction on G.o.d"s list of honour. Round the corner, on the eastern wall, one builder we cannot pa.s.s without notice, for he is an old white-headed man. His name is Shemaiah the son of Shechaniah. We find this man mentioned in 1 Chron.
iii. 22 as a descendant of King David. His son Hattush had returned with Ezra, twelve years before; now here is the old man himself, determined not to let his white hairs prevent him from helping on the good work (ver 29). He builds by the gate which was his charge, the Golden Gate, at the east of the temple court and facing the Mount of Olives.
The last piece of the wall is being done by the goldsmiths and the merchants; and now, as we pa.s.s them, we find ourselves again at the Sheep Gate, at the very spot from which we started in our walk round the city.
Listen to the ring of the trowels, hearken to the shouts of the workmen, as they call to one another and cheer each other on in the work. From morning till night, day after day, the trowels are kept busy, and the work goes on, and already, as we watch, we begin to see the gaps filled up and the ruin of many years repaired.
It was the work of the Lord, a grand work, a glorious work, which those builders of Nehemiah were doing, and G.o.d noticed and marked, and put on His list of honour every one who joined in it.
Times have changed, manners have altered, kingdoms have pa.s.sed away, since the eastern sun streamed upon Nehemiah"s workmen, but there is still work to be done for the Lord. The Master"s workshop is still open, and the Master"s eye is still fixed on the workers, and He still enters the name of each in a register, His great list of honour, kept not in earth, but in heaven.
Is my name then on G.o.d"s honour list? Am I working for Him? Am I to be found at my post, faithfully carrying out the work He has given me to do?
Looking at the walls of Jerusalem, surely the Lord would have us learn three great lessons.