Or a sudden danger, bodily or spiritual, stares us in the face. At once we may lift up the heart and cry--
Lord, save me.
There is no need to kneel down, no need to speak aloud, no need to move from our place. In the office, the workshop, the schoolroom, the place of business, the railway carriage, the street, wherever we may be and in whatever company, the short silent prayer may be sent up to the G.o.d of heaven.
Thank G.o.d, no such prayer is ever unanswered!
CHAPTER III.
The Good Hand.
The mighty universe, the great empire of the King of kings, who shall give us even a faint idea of its size?
It has been calculated that about 100,000,000 stars can be seen from our world by means of a telescope. Yet who can grasp such a number as that?
Which of us can picture in his mind 100,000,000 objects? Let us suppose that instead of 100,000,000 stars we have the same number of oranges; let us arrange our oranges in imagination on a long string, which shall pa.s.s through the centre of each of them. How long will our string have to be if it is to hold the 100,000,000 oranges? It will have to be no less than 6,000 miles long, and our 100,000,000 oranges will stretch in a straight line from England to China.
One hundred million stars, and of all these G.o.d is King. But these are but as a speck compared with His vast universe. Each telescope that is invented, which enables us to see a little further into s.p.a.ce, discovers more and more worlds unseen before. Who can even guess how many still lie beyond, unseen, unnoticed, unheard of? The regions of s.p.a.ce are endless, as G.o.d their Maker is endless.
And all these countless worlds are under the eye of the King of kings.
He rules all, watches all, guides all. Can I, then, believe that He will have time to take notice of my tiny affairs? Can He care if I am sick, worried, or poor, or depressed? Surely I must be ready to say with the Psalmist--
"When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?"
Yet that quaint old saying of John Flavel the Puritan is right, "The man who watches for Providence will never want a Providence to watch." In other words, he who trusts his concerns to a higher power, he who puts his cause in the Lord"s hands, will never be disappointed. The G.o.d who rules the universe will not forget to attend to him, but will watch him, and guide him, and help him, as tenderly as if he was the only being in that universe.
St. Augustine used to say, "Lord, when I look upon mine own life, it seems Thou hast led me so carefully and tenderly, Thou canst have attended to none else; but when I see how wonderfully Thou hast led the world and art leading it, I am amazed that Thou hast had time to attend to such as I."
How much more must we wonder at G.o.d"s loving care, when we look beyond this tiny world to the countless millions of worlds in the universe!
Nehemiah was watching for Providence. He had taken his case to G.o.d, he had trusted all to Him, and Nehemiah did not want a Providence to watch; the G.o.d in whom he had put his confidence did not disappoint him.
"Let me go that I may rebuild Jerusalem," says the cup-bearer; and the great Persian king does not refuse his request, but (prompted, it may be, by the queen who was sitting by him) he asks: "For how long shall thy journey be? and when wilt thou return?"
"And I set him a time." How long a time we are not told. Nehemiah did not return to Persia for twelve years; but it is probable that he asked for a shorter leave of absence, and that this was extended later on, in order to enable him to finish his work.
Cheered and encouraged by the king"s manner, feeling sure that G.o.d is with him and is prospering him, Nehemiah asks another favour of the king. The Persian empire at that time was of such vast extent, that it reached from the river Indus to the Mediterranean, and the Euphrates was looked upon as naturally dividing it into two parts, east and west.
Nehemiah asks, ch. ii. 7, for letters to the governors of the western division of the empire, that they may be instructed to help him and forward him on his way.
He asks, ver. 8, for something more. There is a certain man named Asaph, who has charge of the king"s forest or park (see margin of R.V.). The real word which Nehemiah used was paradise--the king"s paradise. The derivation of the word is from the Persian words Pairi, round about, and Deza, a wall. Up and down their empire, in various places, the Persian kings had these paradises--parks or pleasure grounds--surrounded and shut off from the neighbouring country by a high fence or wall. These paradises were places of beauty and loveliness, where the king and his friends might meet and walk together, and enjoy each other"s society.
Is not this the Lord"s own picture of the place He went to prepare for His people? Did He not say to the thief on the cross, "To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise?" It was a new name taken by our Lord from these paradises of the Persian kings, and given by Him to that new place which He went to prepare for His people, even the Garden of the Lord, the pleasure ground of the King of kings, the place to which His people go when they die. There they enjoy His company, and see His face, and walk with Him and talk to Him, waiting for that glorious day when they shall pa.s.s from the garden of the King into the palace itself.
We are not told where this particular paradise was, of which Asaph was the keeper, but probably it was the place which the kings of Judah had always made their pleasure ground. This was at Etam, about seven miles from Jerusalem, where Solomon had fine gardens, and had made large lakes of water, fed by a hidden and sealed spring.
Solomon himself twice used the word paradise of his gardens, and these are the only places in which the word occurs in the Old Testament, except in Neh. ii. 8.
Solomon says, Eccles. ii. 5, "I made me gardens and paradises." In Cant.
iv. 13 he speaks of "a paradise of pomegranates, with precious fruits."
For three purposes Nehemiah wanted wood from Asaph"s paradise, and asked the king to give him an order for it, that he might deliver to the keeper.
He wanted it (1) for the gates of the palace of the house. _The_ house means the temple, and the palace should be translated the castle.
It was a tower which stood at the north-west corner of the temple platform, and commanded and protected the temple courts. (2) He required wood for the gates of the wall, and (3) for "the house that I shall enter into," i.e. for my own dwelling-house.
All is granted--the royal secretaries are called, and are bidden to write the required instructions to the governors beyond the river, and to Asaph, the bailiff of the forest. Nehemiah takes no credit to himself that all has gone so prosperously, he does not praise his own courage, or wisdom, or tact in making the request, he knows it is a direct answer to a direct prayer, he recognises the fact that it is G.o.d"s doing, and not his.
"The king granted me, according to the good hand of my G.o.d upon me."
That was Ezra"s motto, quoted by him again and again (Ezra vii. 6, 9, 28; viii. 18, 22, 31). In all his deliverances, in every one of his mercies, he had seen the good hand of his G.o.d, and he had taken those words, "The good hand of my G.o.d upon me," as the keynote of his praise, and as the motto of his life. But Nehemiah had in all probability never even seen Ezra, yet here we find him quoting Ezra"s favourite saying.
Can it be that Hanani, his brother, who had been one of Ezra"s companions, had repeated it to him? Can it be that in order to cheer and encourage his brother when he undertook the difficult task of speaking to the king, he told him how Ezra was always repeating these words, and how he found them a sure refuge in time of need? If so, how gladly would Nehemiah hasten to his brother when his duties in the palace were completed, to tell him that Ezra"s motto has held good again, for "the king granted me, according to the good hand of my G.o.d upon me."
"The good hand of my G.o.d." What blessed words! Let trouble come, or temptation come, or death itself come, I will not fear. The good hand of my G.o.d is over me. None can pluck me from that hand. "All my times are in Thy hand, O Lord," and are safe there from even the fear of danger.
Oh, how blessed to be one so sheltered, so shielded, underneath the good hand of my G.o.d! But the same hand is against them that do evil. I must either be in the hand, or have the hand raised against me! Which shall it be?
All is ready now, the preparations are ended, and Nehemiah, accompanied by his brother Hanani, and by a royal escort of soldiers, sets forth on his long journey. Jerusalem, the City of David--how often he had dreamt of it, how earnestly he had longed to see it! Now, at last, his desire is to be granted. The travellers could not sing, as they rode slowly over the scorching desert, "Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem," for the gates of the city were burned with fire, and only a blackened s.p.a.ce showed where each had stood, but they may have joined together in that other psalm, which was probably written about this time, Psalm cii.
"Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come.
"For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust."
There is no misadventure on the journey, they travel safely under the care of the king"s guard; but surely Nehemiah saw a dark cloud on the horizon as he handed in his letters to the governors beyond the river.
One of these was Sanballat, the satrap or governor of Samaria. His name was an a.s.syro-Babylonian one, so that he was probably descended from one of the Babylonian families settled in Samaria, and it signifies "The Moon G.o.d gives life." His native place was Horonaim in Moab, and Sanballat was by nation a descendant of Lot.
With the Samaritan governor was his secretary Tobiah, the servant or the feud slave, a man also descended from Lot, for he was an Ammonite, and standing evidently very high in Sanballat"s favour.
It was probably Tobiah who read Artaxerxes" letter to his master, and very black and gloomy were both their faces as they heard the news it contained.
At the court of Sanballat was a friend of his, Geshem the Arabian, the head or chief of a tribe of Arabs, which we find, from the ancient a.s.syrian monuments recently discovered, had been planted in Samaria by Sargon, King of a.s.syria. This man Geshem was therefore a Bedouin, a descendant of Esau.
These three, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem, cannot conceal their disgust that anyone has been sent from Persia to look after the welfare of Jerusalem. So far they have trampled the Jews under foot as much as possible, and the Jews have been powerless to resist them. But now here is a man come direct from the court at Shushan, with letters from their royal master in his hand, and with orders to rebuild and fortify Jerusalem.
From that moment Sanballat and his friends became Nehemiah"s bitter enemies, determined to thwart and to oppose him to the utmost of their power.
At length the wearisome journey is over, and Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem. He tells no one why he has come; but, worn out with the fatigue he has undergone, he goes quietly to the house of a friend, probably to that of his brother Hanani, and for three days he rests there. Then, on the third night after his arrival, when all Jerusalem is asleep, he rises, mounts a mule or donkey, and, with a few faithful followers, steals out to explore for himself the extent of the ruin, to see how things really were, what was the state of the walls, and how much had to be done to put them into good repair.
Stealing out of the city on the south side, at the spot on which in better days the Valley Gate had stood, a gate which was so called because it opened into the Valley of Hinnom, he turned into the ravine, and went eastward. No doubt there was a moon, and by its quiet light he could see the heaps of rubbish, and the work of the fire which had destroyed the gates 150 years ago. How sad and forsaken it all looked in the moonlight, as he turned "_towards_ the Dragon"s well" (see Revised Version). The site of this Dragon"s Well is very uncertain, but it is generally identified with Upper Gihon. It is sometimes confounded with the Virgin"s Fount, called by the Arabs the Mother of Steps, because there are twenty-seven steps leading down to it, and the descent is very steep. This is the only spring near Jerusalem, and its water is carried by an underground pa.s.sage to the Pool of Siloam. It is an intermittent spring, suddenly rising and as suddenly falling, at irregular intervals.
Two explorers, Dr. Robinson and Mr. Smith, were just about to measure the water, when they found it suddenly rising; in less than five minutes it had risen a foot, in ten minutes more it had ceased to flow, and had sunk to its former level.
The common people believed in olden time, and believe still, that a dragon lies within the fountain, concealed from view; that when he is awake he stops the water from flowing, but that he finds it impossible to keep awake always, and when he falls asleep the water flows.
How eagerly those with Nehemiah would point out each object to him! We can picture Hanani walking by his side, showing him all the different objects, to himself so familiar, to Nehemiah so well known by name, but so strange by sight.
Coming down the Valley of Hinnom they reach the Dung Gate, the gate outside which lay piles of rubbish and offal, swept out of the city, and all collected together by this gate and left to rot in the valley.