The World's Bible.
A great cry, a piercing cry, raised by hundreds of voices, a cry which
resounds through the streets of the city, and which is echoed by the
surrounding hills. What can be the matter? What can be the cause of this
mournful wail?
There was a great cry in Egypt on that awful night, when there was not a
house in which there was not one dead. That was the great cry of terror.
Esau raised a great cry when he found that he had lost his father's
blessing, the great cry of disappointment.
There arose a great cry in the council chamber of Jerusalem, when the
Apostle Paul stood before his judges,--the cry of conflicting opinion.
But the great cry which is sounding in our ears now is no cry of terror
or of disappointment, and the men who join in it are all of one mind;
yet the cry is none the less bitter or heartrending. As we listen to it,
we can distinguish the shrill voices of women mingled with the deeper
ones of men, and we notice also, that, although the cry is one of sorrow
and distress, there is a deep undertone of anger and complaining.
Who are crying, and what is the cause of their distress? Who are
crying? An excited mob of men and women, standing in the streets of
Jerusalem. Look at them well, surely we know some of their faces. Is it
possible, can it be, that we recognize some of those whom we saw working
so happily and cheerfully on the walls? What a change, what a terrible
change in their faces!
What is the cause of their distress? What can have happened to move them
so deeply? Have the Samaritans returned to attack the city? Are the
walls on which they have spent so much labour overturned and laid low in
the dust? No, all without is peaceful, there is no sound of war in the
streets, and the hills around stand out brightly in the sunshine, and
are untrodden by the foot of any foe. The trouble is at home this time,
and as poor Nehemiah listens to the dismal noise, and as he tries to
still the shrill cries, that his voice may be heard, and as he watches
the people rocking to and fro, as Easterns do when moved by sorrow, he
may well feel downcast and disappointed, for a city divided against
itself cannot stand, and as Nehemiah listens to the cry, he clearly sees
that, at that moment, Jerusalem, the city he loves best on earth, is
indeed a divided city.
Who then were these citizens of Jerusalem, these men and these women,
who raised the great cry? They were the poorer classes of the city; it
was a cry of the poor against the rich, a cry like that which was raised
all over France at the time of the French Revolution, a cry for bread.
Nehemiah listens carefully to the cry and complaints of the people, and
as he does so he feels sure they are not raised without cause. There is
undoubtedly great and distressing poverty in the city, and he finds that
this may be traced to three principal causes.
(1) The King of Persia had only allowed the returned captives a very
small tract of country to live in. The rest of the land was filled up by
the Samaritans, the Arabians, the Edomites and other nations who had
settled in Palestine whilst the rightful owners were in Babylon.
Consequently, as their families increased, the Jews found this narrow
strip of country was not sufficient to maintain them, and, as is always
the case, over-population and over-crowding was followed by great
poverty.
(2) Then there had evidently been a severe famine, which had made
matters worse, for there had been numbers of mouths to feed and barely
anything to feed them on. No country is more subject to famine than
Palestine, for the harvest there is entirely dependent on the rainfall.
There are but few springs, there is no river but the Jordan, and that
runs in a deep ravine; the whole fertility of the country hangs on the
amount of rain that falls in autumn and winter. No rain means no corn,
no corn means starvation, and the people know it well. Nowhere on earth
are there such fervent prayers for rain, prayers which are offered by
Turk, Jew, and Christian alike, as there are in Palestine to this very
day, if the rainy season is passing away and a sufficient quantity of
rain has not fallen.
(3) Then Nehemiah found there was a third cause of distress. Every year,
in addition to earning money to keep his wife and children alive, the
poor man had to be ready for a visitor, and this visitor never received
a very hearty welcome. Once a year there arrived at his door an official
sent by the King of Persia. He was the tax-collector, sent to collect
the tribute which had to be paid yearly to their master, the great
sovereign at Shushan. Whatever else went unpaid, that tribute must be
paid; whatever other debts they incurred, that sum must be paid in full,
and paid at once.
Over-population, famine, tribute, it was no wonder that the people were
so poor.
But the great cry in the streets of Jerusalem was not merely a cry of
suffering and distress; it was an angry complaining cry; it was the cry
of those who felt that others were to blame for their sorrows.
As Nehemiah walks amongst the weeping crowds, and as he talks to the
people one by one, he finds that there are no less than three sets of
complainants.
(1) There are the utterly poor people, those who have no private means
whatever, but who are entirely dependent on the work of their hands and
on the wages they get for that work. These come to Nehemiah and pour out
their sorrowful tale. 'We,' they say, 'have large families, for
'We, our sons, and our daughters, are many.'
But 'Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them,' so runs the
Psalm, and are not children a heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord?
Yet when the quiver is _more_ than full (for a quiver only held four
arrows), and when bread is scarce and work bad, it needs faith to trust
the children which the Lord has given to His care, and to feel sure that
He who sent them will send the bread to feed them.
'Now,' say these overburdened parents to Nehemiah, 'we cannot let our
children starve. We have been building this wall and earning nothing,
but we have had to eat all these weeks; we have been obliged to take up
corn for our families lest they should die, and the consequence is we
have run very heavily into debt' (ver. 2). That was the first class of
complainants.
(2) But amongst the weepers Nehemiah found a second class, those who had
once been somewhat better off, and had, in happier days, owned a little
property, and had some means of their own, but who, at the time of the
late famine, had got into difficulties. 'I,' said one, 'had a little
farm in a village near Jerusalem.' 'I,' said another, 'was the owner of
a nice little vineyard or oliveyard on the hill side,' 'I,' said a
third, 'built a house in the city on my return from captivity, and hoped
to leave it to my children.' 'But so terrible was our distress in the
famine,' say these men, 'that we were obliged to borrow money of our
neighbours the rich Jews in Jerusalem. They were willing to lend the
money, but they required security for it, and we were compelled to
pledge or mortgage our little property to these men, and now times are
still bad, and we see no hope whatever that we shall be able to buy our
little possessions back again' (ver. 3).
(3) But the shrillest cries of all came from the third class of
complainants. These were men who, up to a certain point, resembled the
second class. They had once possessed a little property, but in the time
of famine they had parted with their lands, their houses, and their
vineyards like the rest. But the story of the third class did not end
here, these had since then got into still worse difficulties. The
tax-collector had come round to collect the tribute for Artaxerxes, and
he had demanded immediate payment. They had, however, nothing to give
him. What could they do? They were obliged once more to borrow money of
their rich neighbours, who lent it to them at the rate of 12 per cent,
(one eighth part of the money to be paid monthly). And what pledge, what
security did these nobles require for their money? The poor people had
already lost their houses and their vineyards, there was nothing left to
them but their children, and actually the son or the daughter was
pledged or mortgaged to the rich money-lender. If the heavy interest is
not paid, at any moment the child may be seized, and carried off to the
noble's house to be brought up as a slave. 'Nay,' cry some of the
mothers in the crowd, 'our case is worst of all; some of our daughters
have been taken as slaves already, and we have no power to redeem them.
Yet we love our children just as much as these rich people love theirs,
they are just as dear to us as theirs are to them' (ver. 5).
'And then,' says Nehemiah,'when I had heard their cry and listened to
their tale, I was very angry.' But surely it was wrong of Nehemiah to be
angry. Is not anger a bad thing? Is it not one of the works of the
devil, which we are bidden to lay aside?
Yet what says St. Paul? 'Be ye angry, and sin not.' So it is possible to
be angry, and yet to be sinless. And we read, Mark iii. 5, that, in the
synagogue at Capernaum, the Lord Jesus looked round on the hard-hearted
Pharisees with anger; and in Him was no sin.
Nehemiah was very angry, yet Nehemiah sinned not in being so, for it
was anger at sin, anger at the wrongdoing which was bringing disgrace on
his nation, anger at the conduct which was offending God and doing harm
to God's cause. It was righteous anger against the cruelty and
selfishness of those who, in those hard times, had profited from the
poverty and distress of their poor fellow countrymen.
For some time Nehemiah did nothing, but he carefully turned the matter
over in his mind. He says, 'I consulted with myself,' or as it is in the
margin, 'My heart consulted in me.' We can picture him pacing up and
down, saying again and again, What shall I do? What is the wisest course
to take? How can this great evil be stopped? Doubtless, too, he took
this trouble, as he had taken all his other anxieties and cares, and
laid it before the God of heaven.
Then he sends for the nobles and all those who had oppressed the people,
and he gives them very plainly his mind on the matter:
'I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact
usury, every one of his brother.'
And thereby they had broken the law, for no Jew was allowed to take
interest, or increase, of another Jew, much less to exact usury: see
Exod. xxii. 25; Ezek. xviii. 8, 17.
The Hebrew was to look upon every other Hebrew as his brother, and to
treat him as such. There was to be brotherly love in time of misfortune,
such love as would prevent the receiving of increase from the one who
was in trouble. With regard to the mortgaging of land, it does not seem
that these rich men had actually broken the law, such pledges were
allowed, provided that the property mortgaged was returned in the year
of jubilee. But, whilst they had not broken the letter of the law, these
Jews had certainly acted in a hard, self-seeking way, showing no
sympathy whatever for the sorrows of those around them.
How different was this from the generous conduct of Nehemiah himself!
All the time of his government he drew no taxes or contributions from
the people over whom he ruled, as other governors did, and as his
predecessors in Jerusalem had done. Eastern governors in those days,
like Turkish governors now, were accustomed to farm their provinces.
That is to say, the king allowed them no salary, but he put the taxation
of the people in their hands. A certain fixed sum was to be sent to him
every year from the province; and whatever the governor could grind or
squeeze out of the people, over and above this stated amount, went into
his own pocket and formed his salary. Jerusalem now-a-days rings with
many a cry of distress caused by the unjust means used by the pacha to
increase his stipend by putting fresh burdens on the people. The former
Jewish governors had made as much as forty shekels a day, or £1,800 a
year out of the people in their province. But when Nehemiah came to
Jerusalem, he found the people so poverty-stricken and oppressed that he
would not take a single penny for himself. It is probable that his
salary as cup-bearer had been continued, and on this he lived and kept
his household going all the time of his government. Not only so; not
only did Nehemiah pay all his private expenses, but he kept open house
for the people of Jerusalem; every day 150 of the rulers and chief men
dined with him, besides all the visitors to Jerusalem, Jews from other
countries, strangers from foreign nations who were staying but a short
time in the city, all of whom were invited to the governor's house, and
sat down at the governor's table.
Nehemiah himself gives us his daily bill of fare, ver. 18.
1 ox.
6 fat sheep.
Fowls without number.
A fresh supply of wine of all kinds stored in every tenth day.
It was no small expense to have above 150 men to dinner daily, yet for
all this Nehemiah took not a penny from his province, so touched was he
to the heart by the poverty of the people. Not only so, but all the time
the walls were being built he toiled away, and allowed all his household
servants to work both night and day, and yet looked for no payment or
compensation, ver. 16. Then besides all this, Nehemiah had been most
generous in the time of the famine; he had supplied the poor people with
money and with corn, and yet he had firmly refused to allow them to
pledge or mortgage their lands, much less their children, ver. 10.
And Nehemiah tells us the secret of his consistent conduct; he tells us
why he differed so much from the governors who went before him. A strong
power held him back from sin.
'So did not I, because of the fear of God.'
Thus Nehemiah had a right to speak, for he practised what he preached.
But in spite of this, his private appeal to the nobles appears to have
been in vain. They seem to have given no answer, to have taken no
notice of his appeal, and to have given him no reason to think that
they intended to change their conduct.
So he set a great assembly against them. He called a monster meeting of
all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, rich and poor, for he felt that if
their conduct was publicly exposed and condemned, they might possibly be
ashamed to continue it.
Nehemiah's speech at the meeting was very much to the point. He first
tried to shame the nobles by reminding them that whilst he, ever since
his return, had been spending his money in buying back those Jews who
had been sold into slavery to the heathen round, they on the other hand
had actually been doing the very opposite, bringing their fellow
citizens into slavery to themselves. Was this right, or fair, or just?
The argument told, no one could answer it, there was dead silence, ver.
8.
Now, says Nehemiah, consider: 'Ought ye not to walk in the fear of our
God?' Ought ye not to be careful in your conduct, kind, and just, and
generous in your dealing? And why?
'Because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies.'
Because you Jews are God's people, and all these heathen round will
judge your God by what you are. You make a profession of religion, you
claim to have high motives; but if they see you grasping, greedy, hard,
like themselves, what will they think of your religion? Surely they will
say, 'These Jews are no better than ourselves, their religion cannot be
worth much.'
Now, says Nehemiah, remembering all this, bearing in mind the disgrace
you are bringing upon the name of Jew, I call upon you at once to give
up this practice of mortgaging and pledge-taking. Not only so, but I
bid you restore at once the vineyards and the oliveyards, the fields and
the houses, you have taken from these poor people. I bid you also return
the interest they have paid you (the eighth part of the money), and I
call upon you, in every way you can, to undo the evil you have done
already, and for the future to do unto others as you would they should
do to you, vers. 10, 11.
Nehemiah's earnest words prevailed,
'Then said they, We will restore them.'
This promise was followed by a very curious act on the part of Nehemiah.
'I shook my lap.'
The lap is what the Latins called the _sinus_, a fold in the bosom of
the tunic, which was used as a pocket. Eastern-like, Nehemiah used a
sign to show what will happen to any man who shall break the promise he
had just made. God will cast him forth as a homeless wanderer, emptied
of all his possessions, all his ill-gotten wealth. He shall be void or
empty, just as Nehemiah's pocket was void or empty, ver. 13.
'And all the congregation said, Amen.'
Then, instead of the great cry of distress, was heard the great shout of
joy, for
They 'praised the Lord.'
And the promise was not one of those promises made to be broken, for
'The people did according to this promise.'
It has been well said that Christians are the only Bible that men of the
world read. In other words, those who will not read the Bible
themselves, judge the religion of Christ simply by the Christians they
happen to come across. This is not a fair way of judging; it surely
cannot be right to condemn Christianity itself, because some of those
who profess it are not what they ought to be.
Let us picture to ourselves an island in the Pacific Ocean, where no
European has ever been seen. A large ship is wrecked not far from this
island, and three men are able to make their escape in a boat, and to
land upon its shore. The men belong to three different nations--one is a
Frenchman, another is a German, and the third is an Englishman. The
people of the island receive them most kindly, warm them, and feed them,
and shelter them, and do all they can for them till a ship shall come to
take them away.
What return do the three men make for their kindness? The Frenchman is
grateful, and willing to make himself useful in any way he can: he
amuses the children and helps in the work of the house, and does all he
can to make return for the hospitality he is receiving. The German is
very clever with his fingers, and spends his time in teaching the
natives to make many things which they had not been able to do before;
he becomes indeed so helpful to them that they dread the day coming when
he will have to leave them. But the Englishman is a man of low tastes
and bad morals. He spends his time in drinking the spirit he finds on
the island, in quarrelling with the inhabitants, and in ill-treating
their children; there is not a soul on the island who does not rejoice
when the ship bears him away, never to return.
Soon after this, news is brought that a small colony from Europe is
anxious to settle on that island, and to trade with the inhabitants.
The commercial advantages of this step are laid before the natives, and
leave is asked for the party of traders to land. One question, and one
question only, is asked by the inhabitants. Of what nation are these
colonists? The answer is brought back, They are English. At once the
whole island is up in arms. They shall not land, they cry, we will not
hear of it; we know what English people are, we have had plenty of the
English. Had they been French or Germans we would have given them a
hearty welcome, but we never wish to see an Englishman again.
But surely that was not fair, it was not right to judge a whole nation
by one bad specimen. Nor is it right to judge the followers of Christ
in that way. I know a man, says one, who is hard and grasping and
self-seeking, and that man makes a religious profession, therefore I
will have nothing to do with religion. I know a Christian who is
bad-tempered; I know a Christian who is not particular about truth; I
know a Christian out of whose mouth come bitter, unkind words; I know a
Christian who is unpleasant in his manner; I know a Christian with whom
I should be sorry to do business; I know a Christian who is always
mournful and miserable. These are your Christians, are they? Then do not
ask me to be one; I have no opinion of any of them.
Yet, after all, the man who speaks thus draws an unfair conclusion.
Because I find in my bag of gold one bad half-sovereign, or even two or
three bad ones, am I therefore to throw all the rest away? And because
one Christian, or several Christians, disgrace their Master, and act
inconsistently, am I therefore to condemn Christianity itself? Am I
therefore to cut off my own soul from all hope of safety?
But, remembering this, bearing in mind that many eyes are on us, that
our conduct is being read, our ways watched, our actions weighed, our
motives sifted, Christian friends, let us walk carefully. Do not let us
bring disgrace on our Master, do not let us hinder others and be a
stumbling-block[1] in their way; do not let us give the world a wrong idea
of Christ.
We are not half awake, we are not half careful enough; let us walk
circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Let us, whenever we have been
tempted to any inconsistency, be able to take up Nehemiah's brave noble
words,
'So did not I, because of the fear of God.'
I could not get into a temper, I could not be hard or grasping, I could
not do that piece of sharp practice, I could not stoop to that deceit, I
could not disgrace my Master, because in my heart was a principle
holding me back from sin, the fear of the Lord. I feared to grieve the
One who loved me, and that fear kept me safe. 'So did not I, because of
the fear of God.'
[Transcribers note 1: stumbling-black corrected to stumbling-block.]