And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.
a wall of protection · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular construct
Jerusalem
יְרוּשָׁלִַ֙ם֙ye.ru.sha.Lim
H3389
Jerushalaim or Jerushalem · proper noun, a place name
down
מְפֹרָ֔צֶתme.fo.Ra.tzet
H6555
to break out (in many applications · verb, pual passive participle, feminine singular absolute
gates
וּשְׁעָרֶ֖יהָu.she.'a.Rei.ha
H8179
an opening · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
burned
נִצְּת֥וּni.tze.Tu
H3341
to burn or set on fire · verb, niphal perfect, 3rd person common plural
fire
בָאֵֽשׁva.'Esh
H784
fire (literally or figuratively) · preposition with the article + noun, common both genders singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Nehemiah 2:17 Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and…
2 Kings 25:10 And all the army of the Chaldees, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about.
Ezra 5:8 Be it known unto the king, that we went into the province of Judea, to the house of the great God, which is builded with great stones, and t…
Nehemiah 2:3 And said unto the king, Let the king live for ever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres…
Nehemiah 2:13 And I went out by night by the gate of the valley, even before the dragon well, and to the dung port, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, whi…
Nehemiah 7:6 These are the children of the province, that went up out of the captivity, of those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king…
Nehemiah 9:36-37 Behold, we are servants this day, and for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold,…
1 Kings 9:7 Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Nehemiah 1:1-4
What tribe Nehemiah was of does nowhere appear; but, if it be true (which we are told by the author of the Maccabees, 2 Macc. 1:18) that he offered sacrifice, we must conclude him to have been a priest. Observe,
I. Nehemiah's station at the court of Persia. We are here told that he was in Shushan the palace, or royal city, of the king of Persia, where the court was ordinarily kept (Neh 1:1), and (Neh 1:11) that he was the king's cup-bearer. Kings and great men probably looked upon it as a piece of state to be attended by those of other nations. By this place at court he would be the better qualified for the service of his country in that post for which God had designed him, as Moses was the…
Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah--Hanani is called his brother (Neh 7:2). But as that term was used loosely by Jews as well as other Orientals, it is probable that no more is meant than that he was of the same family. According to JOSEPHUS, Nehemiah, while walking around the palace walls, overheard some persons conversing in the Hebrew language. Having ascertained that they had lately returned from Judea, he was informed by them, in answer to his eager enquiries, of the unfinished and desolate condition of Jerusalem, as well as the defenseless state of the returned exiles. The commissions previously given to Zerubbabel and Ezra extending only to the repair of the…
The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down - This must refer to the walls, which had been rebuilt after the people returned from their captivity: for it could not refer to the walls which were broken down and levelled with the dust by Nebuchadnezzar; for to hear of this could be no news to Nehemiah.
John Gill on Nehemiah 1:3
And they said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province,.... In Judea, now reduced to a province of the Persian empire:
are in great affliction and reproach; harassed and distressed, calumniated and vilified, by their enemies the Samaritans:
the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burnt with fire; that is, its wall and gates were in the same condition in which Nebuchadnezzar had left them, for since his times as yet they had never been set up; for this is not to be understood of what was lately done by their adversaries, which is not at all probable.
The Church Fathers
And they said to me: Those who remained and were left, etc. The sense of the letter is clear, because those who had remained from captivity, although they seemed to live in peace with the king of Persia being their friend, whom he had also sent with letters much earlier, who had power in the whole region beyond the river; nevertheless, they were in great affliction of mind, because their enemies reproached them that the holy city still remained in ruins. But now also in the holy Church, it is justly afflicted, and pricked with salutary sadness, they who, themselves repenting from past crimes, consider that their neighbors still lie under vices, so that through the negligence of those who could have benefited many of the corrected, the devil has a free entrance into the Church as if through the walls of a destroyed city. This is all the more necessary to be lamented, if even those who ought to have benefited others by teaching or example, wrongly living, show themselves as an example over destruction to those who see them. For this is what it means for the gates of Jerusalem to be burned with hostile flames, those who ought to have introduced the worthy into the company of the elect by living and teaching well, and kept away the unworthy, to perish by the fire of avarice, lust, pride, contention, envy, and other vices which the malignant enemy is accustomed to incite. But what seems to us to be done about these things, or what ought to be done, is shown when it is immediately added:
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Gate — (1.) Of cities, as of Jerusalem (Jer. 37:13; Neh. 1:3; 2:3; 3:3), of Sodom (Gen. 19:1), of Gaza (Judg. 16:3). (2.) Of royal palaces (Neh. 2:8). (3.) Of the temple of Solomon (1 Kings 6:34, 35; 2…
Shushan — A lily, the Susa of Greek and Roman writers, once the capital of Elam. It lay in the uplands of Susiana, on the east of the Tigris, about 150 miles to the north of the head of the Persian Gulf. It is…
Country · LOVE OF — LOVE OF
Gates · Ma — Ma
Jerusalem · The Jews: Lamented the affliction of — The Jews: Lamented the affliction of
Walls · Of cities: Destruction of, a punishment and cause of grief — Of cities: Destruction of, a punishment and cause of grief
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Nehemiah 1:3 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Keil & Delitzsch on Nehemiah 1:1-4
In the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah, being then at Susa, received from one of his brethren, and other individuals from Judah, information which deeply grieved him, concerning the sad condition of the captive who had returned to the land of their fathers, and the state of Jerusalem. Neh 1:1 contains the title of the whole book: the History of Nehemiah. By the addition "son of Hachaliah," Nehemiah is distinguished from others of the same name (e.g., from Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, Neh 3:16). Another Nehemiah, too, returned from captivity with Zerubbabel, Ezr 2:2. Of Hachaliah we know nothing further, his name occurring but once more, Neh 10:2, in conjunction, as here, wi…
The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down: This probably refers to a recent setback in Jerusalem (see Ezra 4:6-23), not to the Babylonian conquest in 586 BC. • disgrace: Foreigners could gloat about the destroyed city, using it as evidence that Israel’s God was too weak to protect it (cp. Joel 2:17; Mic 7:8-10).
Rashi on Nehemiah 1:3
And they said to me They answered my first question first and my latter question last; first, concerning the Jews and afterwards, concerning the wall and the gates.
who remained Those Jews who remained in the province of Jerusalem are in great trouble and reproach because the gentiles plunder and pillage them.
and the wall of Jerusalem is breached And the wall of the city is breached, and the gates are burned with fire as they were before, for Israel had not built the wall of the city or its gates, only the Temple.
were burned Heb. נִצְתוּ, like נֻצְתוּ.
