Nehemiah 5:1-13

Distress among the Jews. Neither this nor the next section, Nehemiah 5:14 (the two belong closely together) can be in their right place. Nehemiah 5:1 deals with the economic straits to which the Jews had been reduced through want of food; yet the text nowhere hints that their evil plight was in any way the result of the building of the walls; besides, this building did not take long enough (see Nehemiah 6:15) to occasion such widespread suffering as the narrative seems to indicate, even supposing the entire population to have ceased their ordinary work in order to give themselves to the work of building, a thing which Nehemiah 4:12 apparently precludes. Moreover, it is evident from Nehemiah 5:14 that the building had been finished for years, and that Nehemiah was writing after he had been governor for twelve years.

Nehemiah 5:1. their brethren the Jews: i.e. the returned exiles, as distinct from those who had not gone into captivity but had remained in the land.

Nehemiah 5:3. This shows that the complainants were the country folk, and that the cause of their distress was famine. The word rendered dearth is the usual one for famine (cf. Genesis 12:10 and very often elsewhere); it was owing to famine that they had to mortgage their lands and sell their children into bondage.

Nehemiah 5:5. The text is in part corrupt, but the general sense is that some had been forced to sell their children into slavery (cf. Exodus 21:7).

Nehemiah 5:6. The description of how Nehemiah was able to put things right again illustrates his dominating and powerful personality.

Nehemiah 5:11. the hundredth part of: read, by a slight emendation of the text, the interest on; the text, as it stands, gives no sense, since the remission of the hundredth part could have given no appreciable relief.

Nehemiah 5:13. lap: read sleeve.