all the time the walls were being built he toiled away, and allowed all his household servants to work both night and day, and yet looked for no payment or compensation, ver. 16.  Then besides all this, Nehemiah had been most generous in the time of the famine; he had supplied the poor people with money and with corn, and yet he had firmly refused to allow them to pledge or mortgage their lands, much less their children, ver. 10.

And Nehemiah tells us the secret of his consistent conduct; he tells us why he differed so much from the governors who went before him.  A strong power held him back from sin.

‘So did not I, because of the fear of God.’

Thus Nehemiah had a right to speak, for he practised what he preached.  But in spite of this, his private appeal to the nobles appears to have been in vain.  They seem to have given no answer, to have taken no notice of his appeal, and to have given him no reason to think that they intended to change their conduct.

So he set a great assembly against them.  He called a monster meeting of all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, rich and poor, for he felt that if their conduct was publicly exposed and condemned, they might possibly be ashamed to continue it.

Nehemiah’s speech at the meeting was very much to the point.  He first tried to shame the nobles by reminding them that whilst he, ever since his return, had been spending his money in buying back those Jews who had been sold into slavery to the heathen round, they on the other hand had actually been doing the very opposite, bringing their fellow citizens into slavery to themselves.  Was this right, or fair, or just?  The argument told, no one could answer it, there was dead silence, ver. 8.

Now, says Nehemiah, consider:  ’Ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God?’ Ought ye not to be careful in your conduct, kind, and just, and generous in your dealing?  And why?

‘Because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies.’

Because you Jews are God’s people, and all these heathen round will judge your God by what you are.  You make a profession of religion, you claim to have high motives; but if they see you grasping, greedy, hard, like themselves, what will they think of your religion?  Surely they will say, ’These Jews are no better than ourselves, their religion cannot be worth much.’

Now, says Nehemiah, remembering all this, bearing in mind the disgrace you are bringing upon the name of Jew, I call upon you at once to give up this practice of mortgaging and pledge-taking.  Not only so, but I bid you restore at once the vineyards and the oliveyards, the fields and the houses, you have taken from these poor people.  I bid you also return the interest they have paid you (the eighth part of the money), and I call upon you, in every way you can, to undo the evil you have done already, and for the future to do unto others as you would they should do to you, vers. 10, 11.