Finished in Fifty-Two Days

When people cannot stop a piece of work directly, they often go after the person leading it. A friendly invitation to talk things over somewhere out of the way. A rumour, sent around in an unsealed letter so that everyone reads it. A trusted voice suddenly advising you to run. Nehemiah 6 is a sequence of exactly these moves, aimed at one man in the last days before the wall is finished. Each time he refuses to be drawn away from the work. And then, almost in passing, the chapter gives the result: fifty-two days, and it is done.

Where it sits in the story: Act 3's rebuilding reaches a milestone. The wall that lay broken since the Babylonian conquest is complete, and even the enemies recognise that the work was done with God's help. But the chapter ends on a warning: the opposition has allies inside Jerusalem, bound by marriage and letters. The outside threat is fading; the inside compromises that will trouble the rest of the book are already visible.

What this chapter is doing: To show Nehemiah withstanding personal intimidation and deception to the end, and to record the completion of the wall as a work so fast that friends and enemies alike attributed it to God.

• 6:1–4 — With the wall built and only the gate doors left, Sanballat and Geshem invite Nehemiah four times to meet on the plain of Ono. He sees it as a plot to harm him and answers each time that he is doing a great work and cannot come down.
• 6:5–9 — A fifth message comes as an open letter: it is reported, and Geshem confirms it, that Nehemiah plans to rebel and has prophets ready to proclaim him king. Nehemiah answers flatly that none of it is true, and prays for strength.
• 6:10–14 — Shemaiah, shut up in his house, urges Nehemiah to hide with him inside the temple because assassins are coming. Nehemiah refuses — should a man like me run away, or enter the sanctuary to save his life? — and realises Shemaiah was hired by Tobiah and Sanballat. He names the prophetess Noadiah and others who tried to frighten him.
• 6:15–16 — The wall is finished on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. The surrounding nations are afraid and lose their confidence, because they see that this work was done with the help of God.
• 6:17–19 — Even so, nobles of Judah keep up a stream of letters with Tobiah, bound to him by oath and by marriage, and speak well of him to Nehemiah — while Tobiah keeps sending letters to frighten him.

Key verse: Nehemiah 6:15–16  ·  So what: Nehemiah's refusals are simple: I am doing a great work; I will not come down; I will not run. Much important work is lost not to open opposition but to distraction, rumour and fear. The chapter also refuses a tidy ending: the wall is done, but compromise is already at work inside. Finishing one task well does not end the need for watchfulness.