Nehemiah 1:3

3. There in the province The province of Judea. Comp. Ezra 5:8.

In great affliction and reproach From the time of the arrival there of Zerubbabel and the first body of exiles until this date, the returned Jews had been vexed and troubled by neighbouring enemies the descendants of the nations whom the eastern kings had settled in the cities of Samaria.

And though by the favour of the Persian kings they had succeeded in rebuilding the temple, they were still in a comparatively weak and helpless state, and their now implacable enemies, the Samaritans, would naturally take every opportunity that offered to trouble and distress them.

The wall… broken down, and the gates… burned This partly explains their affliction and reproach. The returned exiles had never been able to rebuild the walls and gates of their loved city; and because they still remained in the ruined condition to which the Chaldean army had reduced them more than a century before, (2 Kings 25:9-10,) it was a standing affliction and reproach to the Jews.

Some critics aver that this ruinous state of the wall and gates of Jerusalem must have been caused by some recent calamity probably by those neighbouring heathen tribes whose daughters had been married to certain Jews, but had been lately put away by Ezra’s legislation, as described in Ezra 10:0. They urge that the destruction effected by Nebuchadnezzar’s army more than a hundred years before could have been no news to Nehemiah. But this, like the position of these same critics on the passage in Ezra 4:6-23, (where see notes,) lacks support in the Scripture history. If the walls of Jerusalem had ever been rebuilt since their destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, it is strange that no mention of it occurs in these histories. Their rebuilding by Nehemiah was considered of such importance that a considerable portion of this book is given to a description of it, and any previous work of the kind must have been of sufficient importance to demand, at least, a passing notice. But no such notice is found. The complaint of the Jews’ enemies in Ezra 4:12-16, that the returned exiles were building up the walls of the city, was, as we have shown in the notes there, a crafty misrepresentation, a perversion of the truth, for they were rebuilding the temple, not the city. A work of such importance as the rebuilding of the walls and gates of Jerusalem needs stronger evidence than that letter of the enemies of Judah, so manifestly given to misrepresentation, as the whole context shows.

It may not have been positively news to Nehemiah to be told that the walls and gates of Jerusalem were broken down and destroyed, but this fact was mentioned as showing the great cause or occasion of the affliction and reproach of the Jews at Jerusalem, and seems to have first suggested to Nehemiah the importance of having those walls and gates rebuilt. A work of such magnitude as the rebuilding of that ancient city, and especially of its defences, could not have been undertaken without express permission from the king, and no such permit had ever yet been granted since its destruction by the king of Babylon. The proclamations of Cyrus and Darius authorized only the rebuilding of the temple, and that any thing more than this had yet been attempted by the Jews is without proof.