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Royalty and Ruin
of Nehemiah to give him bad counsel as the word of the Lord. The
chief one was Shemaiah, who previously had a good reputation with
Nehemiah. This man shut himself in a chamber near the sanctuary,
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as if fearing that his life was in danger. The temple was protected
by walls and gates, but the gates of the city were not yet set up.
Professing great concern for Nehemiah’s safety, Shemaiah advised
him, “Let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple,
and let us close the doors of the temple, for they are coming to kill
you.”
If Nehemiah had followed this deceitful counsel, he would have
sacrificed his faith in God and would have appeared cowardly. In
view of the confidence he claimed to have in God’s power, it would
have been inconsistent for him to hide. The alarm would have spread
among the people, they would all have looked after their own safety,
and the city would have been left to its enemies. This one unwise
move on Nehemiah’s part would have been a virtual surrender of all
that he had gained.
God’s Servant Sees Through the Plot
Nehemiah understood the true intent of his counselor. “I per-
ceived that God had not sent him at all,” he says, “but that he pro-
nounced this prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had
hired him ... that I should be afraid and act that way and sin, so that
they might have cause for an evil report.”
More than one of Nehemiah’s “friends” who were secretly in
league with his enemies seconded Shemaiah’s counsel. But Ne-
hemiah answered fearlessly, “Should such a man as I flee? And who
is there such as I who would go into the temple to save his life? I
will not go in!”
Despite the enemies, in less than two months from Nehemiah’s
arrival in Jerusalem the builders could walk on the walls and look
down on their defeated and astonished foes. “When all our enemies
heard of it,” Nehemiah wrote, “they were very disheartened in their
own eyes; for they perceived that this work was done by our God.”
Yet even this evidence of the Lord’s controlling hand was not
enough to restrain rebellion and corrupted loyalties among the Is-
raelites. “The nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and the