Nehemiah 5: A time to protest

Captain Jennifer Barker reminds us that protecting vulnerable people requires courage.

Key text

• Nehemiah 5:1–19

Nehemiah’s story has involved praying, pleading, planning and pushing on. Next, Nehemiah is faced with the need to protect. However, protection isn’t needed from those outside the walls but those within them. At the gate, Nehemiah is alerted to a great injustice and is determined to set it right.

It begins with ‘a great outcry’ from those rebuilding the wall, and their wives, against their fellow Jews (see v1). The situation they are crying out about is very serious. They are struggling to obtain food, they are losing their property, and they are watching their daughters being enslaved. Their words reveal desperation: ‘We are powerless’ (v5).

Nehemiah hears their cries (see v6). Listening is often the first step in protecting anyone. He could easily have dismissed this as not his responsibility – after all, he has been charged with rebuilding the walls – but his stopping to listen shows them that their suffering matters more than his schedule.

It is easier to hear powerful, confident or familiar voices than the voices of people who feel forgotten. People experiencing poverty, debt, homelessness, loneliness or discrimination may struggle to make themselves heard. Shame and fear can prevent them from speaking out at all. Protecting others begins with listening. It requires creating opportunities for people to speak, and then taking their experiences seriously. It also means asking who is absent from our conversations and decisions.

As individuals and churches, are we willing to pause our programmes and plans long enough to hear the cries of people around us – those inside our walls as well as those outside our walls?

Pause and reflect

• Whose voices might God be asking you to hear more clearly?

Verse 6 outlines Nehemiah’s response to the situation: ‘When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry.’ He was angry because members of his community were exploiting their own people.

Is anger a right response? While anger can be destructive when it is uncontrolled, self-centred or directed towards hurting others, Nehemiah’s anger alerts him to the seriousness of injustice and shows people that he is not indifferent to their suffering. We are told that Nehemiah does not react thoughtlessly to these charges: ‘I pondered them in my mind’ (v7). First, he allows himself time to consider what he has heard. Then he decides how to respond.

After pondering his right response, Nehemiah confronts the nobles and officials who are charging interest and profiting from their people’s hardship. He speaks bluntly to them: ‘What you are doing is not right’ (v9).

Protecting vulnerable people sometimes requires more than sympathy; it requires courage. It requires us to question the norm and to speak truth to power, even when uncomfortable. Love cannot remain silent when people are being harmed. Compassion is an active state, not a passive one. Godly anger does not seek revenge. Rather, it seeks justice, repentance and restored and reconciled relationships – as should we as Salvationists.

Pause and reflect

• Is there an injustice about which you feel concerned?
• Could God be calling you to act?

Nehemiah tells the lenders to stop charging interest and – perhaps in a foreshadowing of Jesus and Zacchaeus – goes further. He demands: ‘Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses’ (v11).

The people have suffered real losses, so simply ending the wrongful and unjust practices does not restore to the people what is rightfully theirs. In the face of such truth, the nobles and officials agree to return people’s property and demand nothing further. Imagine the sense of liberation and restoration of those who felt powerless at the start!

Nehemiah then asks the lenders to make a public commitment, creating accountability that would lead to real and timely action.

Repentance is more than saying sorry. When our actions – or those of organisations or communities – have harmed someone, genuine repentance requires not only the feeling of regret, but also asks what can be done to put things right. This may involve returning what has been taken, correcting something that has been said, changing a procedure or rebuilding trust over time. Certainly, repentance and sacrifice often go together.

Pause and reflect

• Rather than merely feeling sorry for those affected, is there a wrong or injustice that you can help to put right?
• Who or what can you help restore?

The final verses of this passage show us some of Nehemiah’s character as a leader. During his 12 years as governor, he did not claim the allowances that were a perk of his position as those before him had done. These allowances placed a heavy burden on the people, so he chose another way: ‘Out of reverence for God I did not act like that’ (v15). Why? Nehemiah did not seek power, status or even people’s good opinion. Foremost, he sought God’s good opinion. He prayed: ‘Remember me with favour, my God, for all I have done for these people’ (v19).

Nehemiah reminded those wielding unjust practices in whose name they were doing so. Again, he spoke truth to power and warned: ‘Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?’ (v9). Nehemiah challenged them to think about what this looked like to others, and what it told others about God. This reminds me of God’s requirement: ‘To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8).

Pause and reflect

• What privilege or resource do you have that could be used to help others?

A time to protect is a time to listen, to act, to restore and to sacrifice. As we do so, we reflect the character of the God who hears the cry of the vulnerable and calls his people to become a place of safety.