Nehemiah 1:1

THE SAD TIDINGS FROM JUDAH, Nehemiah 1:1-3.

1. The words of Nehemiah Like each book of the twelve minor prophets, this Book of Nehemiah opens with an announcement of its author’s name. In thus it differs from all the other historical books. Nehemiah is here called the son of Hachaliah, but otherwise his genealogy is unknown. He was, probably, like Zerubbabel, a descendant of the house of Judah, and of the family of David. His words are here to be understood, not merely as his discourses, but his acts and experiences also.

The month Chisleu The ninth month of the Jewish year, corresponding nearly with our December. It was amid the rains of this same month, twelve years before, that the Jews assembled at Jerusalem to Ezra to confess their sins, and to put away their heathen wives. Ezra 10:9.

The twentieth year Of Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Comp. Nehemiah 2:1.

Shushan the palace So called because it was the seat of the principal palace of the Persian Empire. Strabo says (xv, 3, 3) that the palace of this place was embellished more than the other palaces of the empire. Shushan, or, as it is more commonly called, Susa, was the winter residence of the kings of Persia, as Ecbatana was their summer residence. See note on Ezra 6:2. It has been identified with the modern Sus, or Shush. Its ruins cover a space six thousand feet long, by four thousand five hundred feet broad. By excavations made in these mounds of rubbish, Mr. Loftus, in 1852, discovered what he regards as the remains of the identical palace mentioned here and in the Book of Esther. He ascertained the position of the seventy-two columns of the ancient palace, and was thus enabled to present the following ground-plan. In this plan there is a great central hall of thirty-six columns, surrounded on three sides by great porches, each having twelve columns. These columns were over eight feet in diameter, and stand about twenty-seven feet apart. The same plan appears, also, in the great palace of Xerxes at Persepolis. See note on Esther 5:1. These exterior porches were, according to Fergusson, the great audience halls, and served the same purpose as the “house of the forest of Lebanon” in Solomon’s palace. It was at this great palace that Daniel saw his vision of the ram and the he goat, (Daniel 8:2;) here Xerxes “sat on the throne of his kingdom” when he ordered the feast at which he proposed to exhibit the beauty of his queen Vashti, (Esther 1:2;) and here Nehemiah served as cupbearer.

Shushan was one of the most ancient and celebrated cities of the East, and was wisely fixed upon by the kings of Persia as the chief seat of their court and empire. Its ruins are situated about one hundred miles north of the northern end of the Persian Gulf, in a fertile region watered by the rivers Kherkhah and Dizful.