Verses 1–14
Nehemiah - Chapter 6
Insinuations and Threats, Verses 1-14
The day came that Nehemiah’s enemies realized the Jews really would restore the walls of Jerusalem. They were finished except for the installing of the doors in the gates. They decided on one last desperate play to scare Nehemiah into compromise with them. Sanaballat sent messages to Nehemiah implying an imperative and mysterious reason why they should have a meeting. Geshem the Arabian joined him in the invitation to meet in one of the villages in the plain of Ono. Ono was in the Mediterranean coastal area, about twenty-five miles northwest of Jerusalem. The intent was likely to get Nehemiah as far from help as possible and possibly to assassinate him. But he suspected their evil intentions and refused to go.
The message of Nehemiah to his enemies has often been applied to the work of those who refuse to be hindered from His calling today by the world’s invitations, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?" There is no work greater than what is being done for the Lord. There is no good and compelling reason why such work should be interrupted for fleshly purposes. Note that 1) Nehemiah’s work was great; 2) it would stop if he acquiesced in Sanballat’s invitation; 3) he refused to stop the work. It is all very simple: recognition of the importance, perseverance in its advancement, and refusal to interrupt. Compare the admonition of 2 Peter 3:14 for today.
Sanballat and Geshem did not give up easily. Four times they repeated their insistent invitation, making the meeting appear very urgent, as indeed it was for their purpose. Every time Nehemiah answered the same. Finally they sent a letter to him in which they divulged a supposed rumor calculated to involve Nehemiah in very serious trouble. It was to the effect that it was being widely circulated among the surrounding people that Nehemiah was intending to rebel against the king of Persia and restore the kingdom of Judah with himself asking. Therefore he had built up the walls as a defensive measure.
The message was emphasized by the words, "And Gashmu saith it" (verse 6). Gashmu and Geshem were the same person, the letters of the name being written differently according to the diction of the original language. The Persian king employed a system of surveillance throughout his empire known as "the king’s eyes," whose business it was to be watchful for trouble-makers. It is believed that Geshem (or Gashmu) held that position in Judah. For that reason it could be bad for Nehemiah if he sent such a report to Artaxerxes. Surely this would frighten Nehemiah into complying with the invitation of his enemies for a meeting. The Devil increases his pressure to make one child of God fall.
Of course even this did not succeed. The prophets whom Nehemiah had purportedly set up to preach to the people the need of making Nehemiah their king were a product of the enemies’ imagination and scheme to compromise his work. Nehemiah accused them of falsehood, malicious and intentional. It appears that some had become afraid by these reports, but Nehemiah carried it to the Lord, "Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands." With so much pressure, both inside and outside, he felt the need for God’s power to strengthen him to resist them.
While Nehemiah had no preachers prompting a kingship for him, Sanballat’s party did have their preachers in Jerusalem, working underhandedly to influence Nehemiah to make a fatal error. These were Jews working for the enemy. One was Shemaiah, to whose house Nehemiah came. Shemaiah proposed to Nehemiah that he was in mortal danger. He suggested that they go into the temple and shut themselves up in sanctuary, for assassins were on their way to kill Nehemiah. They planned to do their murderous deed by night, when he least expected anything.
But Nehemiah deducted from this that Shemaiah was a false prophet, not a representative of the Lord as he claimed, but of Sanballat and Tobiah. Should an innocent man flee for refuge to the temple? Would that not make him suspect in their very accusations? He deduced that the enemies had hired Shemaiah to scare Nehemiah into intruding into the sacred precincts of the temple. Had he done this he would have gained the opposition of the priests and of the Lord Himself, for he had no right there as an ordinary Jew. He must not go where only the Levitical priests were allowed.
Sanballat and Tobiah even had their spokespeople among the women, Noadiah spreading fear also. The passage closes with another of Nehemiah’s short petitions to the Lord. He asks God to take note of the evil opposition of Tobiah and Sanballat, working through Shemaiah and Noadiah and others, that their scheme would not succeed. Godly Nehemiah was doubtless acquainted with the encouraging words of the Lord through Isaiah (Isaiah 41:10).