IV.  Nehemiah’s Plan of Work.  Fortunately Nehemiah possessed resources as well as tact.  He quickly disarmed the opposition and won at least the nominal support of the leaders by entertaining one hundred and fifty of them as his guests.  Thus he was able to place them under personal obligation to him, to keep them under close surveillance, and to command their co-operation.  In the second place he appealed to them and to the people by means of eloquent addresses which reveal his enthusiasm and devotion.  Furthermore, he did not depend upon the reports of others, but personally studied the situation.  His secret mid-night ride down through the Valley Gate to the southwest of Jerusalem and thence eastward along the Hinnom Valley to the point where it joins the Kidron, and from there up the valley, gave him most accurate information regarding conditions.  In most cases the ancient foundations of the city walls still remained.  The first need was to remove the rubbish and where stones had fallen to replace them.  The towers required certain timbers, which were cut probably from the royal domains to the south of the city.  Nehemiah enlisted all members of the community both within and without Jerusalem.  He organized them under their local leaders and set them to the task in which each was most interested.  Thus the heads of the different villages, the elders of the leading families, the guilds of workmen, and even the priests, were all put to work and inspired by the spirit of natural rivalry as well as common loyalty.  Nehemiah himself with his immediate followers directed the work, and instituted a strict military rule which secured both efficiency and protection.

V. The Restored Walls.  In the light of recent excavations at Jerusalem it is possible to follow Nehemiah’s work in detail.  In the destruction of the walls by the Chaldeans the city had suffered most on the north where it was nearly level and protected by no descending valleys.  Just north of the temple area a little valley ran up from the Kidron, leaving but a narrow neck of land connected directly with the plateau on the north.  Here two great towers were restored that probably occupied the site of the later Roman tower of Antonia.  Thence the wall ran westward across the upper Tyropoean Valley, which was here comparatively level.  Numerous bands of workmen were assigned to this part of the work.  The gate of the old wall was probably identical with the corner gate at the northwestern end of the city.  The Ephraim Gate a little further to the southwest apparently corresponded to the modern Joppa Gate.  From this point a broad wall ran to the western side of the city where the hill descended rapidly into the Valley of Hinnom, making its defence easy.  At the southwestern end of the city stood the Tower of the Furnaces and the Valley Gate of which the foundations have recently been laid bare.  The gate itself was narrow, being only eight feet wide, but the wall was here nine feet in thickness.  The eighteen