Nehemiah Rebuilds the City

There was at that time in Babylon a man named Nehemiah, a servant of the king and a Jew by birth, much loved by Artaxerxes for the services he had done him. He asked his fellow Jews about the state of their ancestral city, and when he learned that his homeland still lay in the same ruin as before, he is said to have been troubled with all his heart and to have prayed to God with groans and many tears. He also called to mind the sins of his nation and earnestly begged for God’s compassion. So the king, noticing as Nehemiah waited at table that he seemed sadder than usual, asked him to explain the cause of his grief. Then he began to lament the misfortunes of his nation and the ruin of his ancestral city, which had now lain leveled to the ground for almost two hundred and fifty years, a proof of the evils they had suffered and a spectacle for their enemies. So he begged the king for leave to go and restore it. The king gave way to these loyal pleas and sent him off at once with a guard of cavalry, so that he could make the journey more safely, and at the same time gave him letters to the officials asking them to supply him with everything he needed. [a]

When he arrived at Jerusalem, he divided the work on the city among the people, man by man, and all competed with one another in carrying out their orders. The rebuilding was already half done when the jealousy of the pagan peoples round about broke out, and the neighboring cities conspired to interrupt the work and frighten the Jews away from building. But Nehemiah posted guards against those who attacked the people, was not alarmed in the least, and carried through what he had begun. So, when the wall was completed and the gateways finished, he measured out the city so that houses could be built within it by families.

He also reckoned that the people were too few for the size of the city, for there were no more than fifty thousand of them, of both sexes and of every rank. So far had their once enormous numbers been reduced by frequent wars and by the multitude kept in captivity. For in former times those two tribes, of whom the remaining people were all that survived, had been able to put three hundred and twenty thousand armed men in the field after the ten tribes separated from them. But God had given them up to death and captivity because of their sin, and they had sunk to the pitifully small number they now had. This company, as I have said, was made up of the two tribes only. The ten that had been carried away earlier were scattered among the Parthians, Medes, Indians and Ethiopians; they never returned to their own country, and to this day they are held under the rule of barbarian nations.

The completion of the restored city is reported to have taken place in the thirty-second year of the reign of Artaxerxes. From that time to the crucifixion of Christ, that is, to the consulship of Fufius Geminus and Rubellius, three hundred and ninety-eight years passed. And from the restoration of the temple to its destruction, which was carried out by Titus under Vespasian when Augustus was consul, there was a period of four hundred and eighty-three years. Daniel foretold this long before, announcing that from the restoration of the temple to its overthrow seventy-nine weeks would pass. Now from the time the Jews were taken captive to the time the city was restored, there were two hundred and sixty years.