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.’