Nehemiah 4 Bible study: One hand on the work

The opposition grows as the wall goes up. First it is words. "When Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry, and was very indignant, and mocked the Jews" (4:1). He asks question after question in front of "his brothers and the army of Samaria" (4:2): "What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, since they are burned?" (4:2). Tobiah adds: "What they are building, if a fox climbed up it, he would break down their stone wall" (4:3). Then the work goes on: "all the wall was joined together to half its height" (4:6). When the enemies hear "that the breaches began to be filled, they were very angry" (4:7), "and they all conspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem, and to cause confusion among us" (4:8). By 4:11 the words are a threat to kill: "They will not know or see, until we come in among them and kill them, and cause the work to cease" (4:11). The more the wall stands, the harder they push.

Nehemiah 4:9→leads toMatthew 26:41

When the enemies "all conspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem" (4:8), the builders did two things together: "But we made our prayer to our God, and set a watch against them day and night because of them" (4:9). In Gethsemane Jesus told Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, "Stay here and watch with me" (Matthew 26:38), and when he found them sleeping, "Watch and pray, that you don’t enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41). Jesus doesn't cite Nehemiah, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: praying and keeping watch together in an hour of danger. Some read them together because in both, prayer and watching go side by side, neither in place of the other. Others keep them apart: the builders' watch was a guard against an attack (4:9, 4:11), while Jesus called for watching against temptation, in the hour when, as he said, "the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners" (Matthew 26:45).

לָחַםlachamsay la-KHAM

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "fight, do battle". It comes three times in the Hebrew of Nehemiah, all in this chapter, and each time a different side fights. The enemies "all conspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem" (4:8). Nehemiah tells the people, "fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses" (4:14). And he tells them, "Our God will fight for us" (4:20). At the Red Sea Moses had said, "The LORD will fight for you, and you shall be still" (Exodus 14:14): in Hebrew will fight for is the same verb in the same form, yillachem, in both verses. Moses used the same verb when he commanded Joshua (Deuteronomy 3:21): "for the LORD your God himself fights for you" (Deuteronomy 3:22).