NEHEMIAH, or Nehemias, son ofHachaliah, was born at Babylon during the captivity (Nehem. i. 1, 2, et seq.'). He was, according to some, of the race of the priests; but according to others, he was of the tribe of Judah and the royal family. Those who maintain the former opinion support it by a passage in Ezra (x. 10), where he is called a priest; but those who believe that he was of the race of the kings of Judah say that as Nehemiah for a considerable time governed the republic of the Jews, it is probable he was of that tribe to which the kings always belonged. Nehemiah mentions his brethren Hanani, and some other Jews, who, having come to Babylon during the captivity, acquainted him with the sad condition of their country; and the office of cup-bearer to the king of Persia, to which Nehemiah was promoted, is considered as a further proof that he was of an illustrious family. Lastly, he excuses himself from entering into the inner part of the temple, probably because he was only a layman (Nehem. vi. 11). “Should such a man as I flee? And who is there that, being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life ?” The Scripture (Ezra, ii. 63; Nehem. vii. 65) calls him tirshatha, or cup-bearer; no doubt because he held this employment at the court of Artaxerxes Longimanus. He had an exceeding great tenderness for the country of his fathers, although he had never seen it; and one day, when some Jews newly arrived from Jerusalem acquainted him with the miserable state of that city, that its walls were beaten down, its gates burned, and the Jews become a reproach amongst all nations, he became so sensibly affected with this relation, that he fasted, prayed, and humbled himself before the Lord, imploring him to be favourable to the design which he had then conceived of asking the king’s permission to rebuild Jerusalem. In the course of his attendance at court, he presented the cup to the king according to custom, but with a countenance sad and dejected, which the king observing, entertained some suspicion that he had conceived some evil design; but Nehemiah disclosing the occasion of his disquiet, explained the cause of his grief, upon which Artaxerxes gave him permission to go to Jerusalem, and repair its walls and gates, upon this condition, however, that he should return to court at a time appointed. Letters were accordingly made out, directed to the governors beyond the Euphrates, with orders to furnish Nehemiah with the timbers necessary for covering the towers and gates of the city, and the house designed for Nehemiah himself, who was now appointed governor of Judaea, in the year of the world 3350.

Nehemiah having arrived at Jerusalem with the king’s commission, went round the city, and having viewed the condition of the walls, assembled the chief of the people, produced his commission, and exhorted them to undertake the reparation of the gates and the walls of the city. Finding every person ready to obey him, he immediately began the work. The enemies of the Jews observing these works in such forwardness, employed all the means in their power to deter Nehemiah from this undertaking, and made several attempts to surprise him; but finding that their designs had been discovered, and that the Jews were upon their guard, they had recourse to stratagem, endeavouring to draw him into an ambuscade in the fields, where they pretended they would finish the dispute at an amicable conference. But Nehemiah gave them to understand that the work he had begun required his personal attendance, and that therefore he could not meet them. He returned the same answer to four several messages that they sent, one after another, on the same subject.

Sanballat, the chief of the enemies of the Jews, together with hisassociates,≡ent information of a report that the Jews were building the walls of Jerusalem solely with the design of rendering it a place of strength, to support them in an intended revolt; and that Nehemiah had also suborned [7:16:81]false prophets to favour his designs, and to encourage the people to choose him king; wherefore, in order to put a stop to these rumours, he advised Nehemiah to come to him, that they might confer together, and adopt such resolutions as should be found convenient. Nehemiah, however, gave himself no trouble on this account, but returned for answer, that all these accusations were false, and had been made at random. About the same time he discovered that a false prophet called Shemaiah had been corrupted by his enemies, and that some of the chief men of the city were secretly in confederacy with them. Yet all this did not discourage him; he went on with his work, and happily completed it in fifty-two days after it had been commenced.

We read in the books of the Maccabees that Nehemiah sent to search for the holy fire, which before the captivity of Babylon the priests had hidden in a dry and deep pit; but not finding any fire there, and only a thick muddy water, he sprinkled this upon the altar; whereupon the wood which had been moistened with this water took fire as soon as the sun began to appear. When this miracle came to the knowledge of the king of Persia, he caused the place to be encompassed with walls where the fire had been hidden, and granted great favours and privileges to the priests. It is recorded in the same books, that Nehemiah erected a library, in which he placed whatever he could find, either of the books of the prophets, of King David, or of such princes as had made presents to the temple. Lastly, he returned to Babylon, according to the promise which he had made to king Artaxerxes, about the thirty-second year of that prince’s reign, and in the year of the world 3563; but he subsequently revisited Jerusalem, where he died in peace, about the year 3580, having governed the people of Judah for about thirty years.

The book which, in the English Bible, as well as in the Hebrew, bears the name of Nehemiah., is in the Latin Bible called the book of Esdras ; and it must be confessed, that though this author speaks in the first person, and though at the first reading one would think that he had written it day by day as the transactions occurred, yet there are some things in the book which could not have been written by Nehemiah himself. For example, memorials are quoted, in which were registered the names of the priests in the time of Jonathan the son of Eliashib, and even down to the times of the high priest Jaddus, who went out to meet Alexander the Great, which must have been afterwards added.

It may well be questioned whether this Nehemiah be the same that is mentioned in Ezra, ii. 2, and Nehem. vii. 7, as one who returned from the Babylonian captivity under Zerubbabel; since from the first year of Cyrus to the twentieth of Artaxerxes Longimanus, no less than ninety-two years intervene; so that Nehemiah must at this time have been a very old man, at the lowest computation an hundred, and consequently incapable of being the king’s cup-bearer, of taking a journey from Shushan to Jerusalem, and of behaving there with all the courage and activity which have been ascribed to him. We may therefore conclude that this was a different person, though of the same name, and that Tirshatha, the other name by which he is called (Ezra, ii. 63; and Nehem. vii. 65), denotes the title of his office, and, both in the Persian and Chaldaic tongues, was the general name given to the king’s deputies and governors.