Nehemiah 5:4 - Exposition

The king's tribute . Judaea, like other Persian provinces, had to pay a tribute, partly in money and partly in kind, yearly to the Persian monarch (see the comment on Ezra 4:13 ); but there is no reason to believe that this burthen was generally felt as oppressive, nor that it was heavier in Judaea than elsewhere. But by the very poor even a small amount of direct taxation is felt as a grievance; and the necessity of meeting the demands of the tax-gatherer was in the ancient world often the turning-point, which compelled the contracting of a debt (Liv; 2.23); and so it seems to have been with these complainants,