Hear, O our God, for we are despised; turn their reproach on their own heads, and give them as plunder to a land of captivity! Do not cover their iniquity, and do not let their sin be blotted out from before You; for they have provoked You to anger before the builders. So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.
Where the Reproach Goes
After a family dinner where an uncle laughed at her decision to leave a corporate job and stay home with her children, a mother sits in the car park with the engine off. She has three replies ready, each one sharp. She puts the keys down and prays.
Nehemiah makes the same turn. Tobiah and Sanballat have spoken, and Nehemiah answers God. Verse 4 opens with a word upward: Hear, O our God, for we are despised. The reproach goes to the One who hears.
The prayer is rough, and believers have read its harder lines in different ways. What Nehemiah does with the injury is plain: he hands it to God, and verse 6 finds him building. Behind the prayer stands an old promise. God told Abram he would curse the one who curses his people (Genesis 12:3), and chapter 9 of this same book retells that covenant. The text places Nehemiah on that ground.
Whatever we hand to God leaves our hands free to build.
A Mind to Work
Verse 6 holds a quiet surprise. After all the noise, the narrator reports progress: the entire wall was joined together up to half its height. The reason takes seven words: the people had a mind to work. Other translations say heart; the Hebrew word covers both, so the willingness belonged to the whole person.
The mother goes home, packs the lunch boxes, and answers Monday's emails from the kitchen table. The uncle is the same uncle. Her will had bent toward the work, and it stayed bent.
Half height is a good place to be. It stands high enough to see over and low enough to be laughed at. Most faithful work lives at that height, stone joined to stone while the noise goes on around it.
A will given to God's work keeps laying stones while the noise goes on.
Reflect
- What reproach have you carried in silence, and whose words come back to you at night?
- What work of yours stands at half its height, and what stone will you lay on it today?
Pray
Father, I have replies ready for the people who laughed, and I'm tired of rehearsing them. I give you the words that were said and the people who said them; you judge, and I build. Keep my mouth quiet where you want it quiet, and keep my hands moving. Give me a mind to work today, half-built as the wall is. I rest in the covenant love that held your people then and holds me now. Amen.