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
pass 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 God 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 space, discovers
more and more worlds unseen before. Who can even guess how many still
lie beyond, unseen, unnoticed, unheard of? The regions of space are
endless, as God 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 God 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 God'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 God, he
had trusted all to Him, and Nehemiah did not want a Providence to watch;
the God 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 God 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
pass 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 God's doing, and
not his.
'The king granted me, according to the good hand of my God 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 God, and he had taken those
words, 'The good hand of my God 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 God upon me.'
'The good hand of my God.' What blessed words! Let trouble come, or
temptation come, or death itself come, I will not fear. The good hand of
my God 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 God! 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 space 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 Assyro-Babylonian one, so that he was probably descended from
one of the Babylonian families settled in Samaria, and it signifies 'The
Moon God 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
Assyrian monuments recently discovered, had been planted in Samaria by
Sargon, King of Assyria. 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 passage 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.
Here he examines in the moonlight the masses 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
massed 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 nobles 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 God 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 assembly 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 accumulated 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 God'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.'