(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).