‘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.