But security from outward foes is not enough to bring happiness to a people.  Even before the walls were finished some of the poor people among the Jews came to Nehemiah with a bitter complaint against their rich neighbors.  “We are starving,” they said.  Others said:  “We have mortgaged our fields in order to borrow money that we may buy food for our children.  And now because we cannot pay these men take our fields from us, and even sell our sons and daughters into slavery.”  It was the old story of greed and oppression.  Those who were stronger and more fortunate used their advantage to oppress their brothers and extort from them all that they could pay.  So a few men were able to live in luxury, even in those troubled days, while the great majority suffered in poverty and misery and despair.

=The great massmeeting.=—­In that little country of Judaea it was possible to gather into an assembly, perhaps in the open space in front of the temple, men from almost every country village and city street.  Such an assembly Nehemiah called and laid before it the complaints he had received.  He told the rich nobles to their faces:  “You exact usury, every one, of his brother.  The thing you do is not good....  I pray you leave off this usury.”  The nobles had nothing to say.  Every one knew that what Nehemiah said was true.  Then he went on:  “Restore to them their fields, their vineyards, their olive-yards, and their houses, also the grain, the new wine, and the oil that you exact from them.”  Then said they, “We will restore them.”

And Nehemiah made them take oath to carry out their promise.  “Also I shook out my lap,” Nehemiah writes in his memoirs, “and said, So God shake out every man from his house, and from his labor, that performeth not this promise; even thus be he shaken out and emptied.  And all the congregation said ‘Amen,’ and praised the Lord.  And the people did according to this promise.”

=The beginnings of a just and happy nation.=—­Nehemiah could not stay long in Jerusalem.  But he was able to make another visit a few years later.  And for a time at least his ideas were carried out.  During this time there was happiness among the people.  They all had something to eat and clothes to wear.  All fathers and mothers had a little time to play with their children after the close of work each day.  All who could read had a little time to study the rolls of the prophets and the law of Jehovah.  And all were brothers.  More than ever before the old dreams, handed down from Abraham, had begun to come true.

STUDY TOPICS

1.  Look up the story of Nehemiah in the Bible dictionary.

2.  Read Nehemiah 1-2, or 5. 1-6, 16.

3.  On the right side of the line, below, write what in your judgment corresponds to the men and conditions of Nehemiah’s time.