Read Time: 7 minutesNehemiah 5–6
The enemy outside could not stop the wall, but the danger turns inward — greed among the brethren — and then to the subtler attack of distraction; and Nehemiah meets both by refusing to come down from the great work. The poor cry out: famine and the king’s tribute have driven them to mortgage fields and sell their children to their own wealthy brethren, who exact usury. Nehemiah is angry, and his rebuke is sharp: ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies? The wall can survive Sanballat and fall to usury — internal injustice would ruin what external siege could not.
The reform is immediate and costly. The nobles restore the lands, the vineyards, the exacted interest. And Nehemiah’s own household accounts are laid open: a hundred and fifty men at his table daily, besides those that came in from the nations, an ox and six sheep and fowls prepared every day and wine in store — and he paid for all of it himself. The table is the governor’s most Christlike act: the man with the right to be fed by the people feeds them instead. For twelve years he required not the bread of the governor, because the bondage was heavy upon this people — and the reason is named: because of the fear of God. The leader bears the cost he refuses to lay on others — Nehemiah’s authority is matched by his self-denial; he eats at his own charge so the burdened need not carry him.
Then the attack turns to distraction. Four times Sanballat invites him to meet in the plain of Ono, meaning him harm, and four times comes the great refusal: I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you? I cannot come down from a great work — the single-minded answer to every lure that would pull him off the wall, however reasonable the meeting sounds. The descent is always downward; the work is always up.
The last snare is a false refuge. The hired prophet Shemaiah urges Nehemiah to hide in the temple, but Nehemiah discerns that God had not sent him, and refuses to save his life by sin — should such a man as I flee? And so the wall is finished in fifty-two days, and even the enemies perceived that this work was wrought of our God. The finished wall is recognized as God’s work — the speed and the survival together testify that the hand on Ezra and on Nehemiah has done it.
Do not let greed within ruin what the siege without could not; refuse to come down from the great work, and refuse the false refuge — the finished work will be known as God’s.
Joel 1
Joel opens with a devastation so total it strips the land bare in four waves, and the prophet reads the locusts as the herald of a greater day: the day of Yahweh is at hand. And the man reading them is named for the point he is making. The name is worth the weight: Joel is Yahweh is El; Elijah is El is Yahweh — the same two words, reversed. Joel is the Elijah of Judah, and the resemblance runs past the name. Both come out of nowhere with no lineage and no date, announcing disaster in their first breath (1 Kgs 17:1; Joel 1:1). Both promise the rain’s return (1 Kgs 18:41; Joel 2:23). Both know the earthquake and the fire (1 Kgs 19:11-12; Joel 1:19-20; 2:10). Both are prophets of one word: return. And Joel’s great promise — the Spirit poured on all flesh — is the thing Malachi says Elijah comes to make ready for. That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten. Four waves leave nothing — successive armies of insects consume the vine, the fig, the field, until the land is a stubble and the joy of harvest withers.
The call goes out to wake and mourn — and the first figure Joel reaches for lands with peculiar force after fourteen chapters of Hosea. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. A betrothed girl whose bridegroom is dead: not a widow of forty years, but a girl who lost him before the wedding. Joel opens by asking Judah to mourn like a jilted bride — which is exactly the figure Hosea has just spent his whole life enacting. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; the drunkard’s wine is cut off, the farmer’s field is wasted, the priest’s offering fails because the grain and the drink offering are cut off from the house of Yahweh. When the offering fails, the whole life of worship falters — the locust has reached even the altar, and the ministers mourn between the porch and the altar. The disaster is not random; it is summons.
And Joel names what the locusts announce. Alas for the day! for the day of Yahweh is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. The locust plague is a rehearsal of the day of Yahweh — the stripping of the land in Joel’s time is a small enactment of the great day when the true army comes, and the prophet uses the present ruin to point to the coming reckoning. What the insects did to the field, the day of Yahweh will do on a scale no one can ignore.
So the chapter ends as a trumpet. Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders… cry unto Yahweh. The right response to the day at hand is to gather and cry — not to explain the disaster away but to turn it into a summons to repentance and prayer. The locusts have done what the prophets could not: emptied the people enough that they might at last cry out to the One who alone can fill them again.
Four waves of locusts strip the land to announce the day of Yahweh at hand — sanctify a fast, gather the assembly, and cry unto him while the warning still stands.
1 Thessalonians 5
Paul takes the day of the Lord that Joel announced and turns it into a charge to watch: it comes as a thief, but the children of light are not caught in the dark. The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. The world will be saying Peace and safety when sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. The day comes suddenly on those crying peace — the false security is itself the sign that the day is near, the locust-blind ease of a people who will not read the warning.
But the saints are not in that darkness. Ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of the light, and the children of the day. The children of light are not surprised by the day — not because they know its hour, but because they live awake; the day cannot break in on a house already watching. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
The watching is armed, the same posture as Nehemiah on the wall. Putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. And there is a quiet equation here. In Ephesians the same piece of armor is the breastplate of righteousness; here it is faith and love. Set the two side by side and you have the sum: faith and love are what righteousness is made of. The breastplate was the high priest’s garment, and its original owner is named in Isaiah — he put on righteousness as a breastplate (Isa 59:17). It is Yahweh’s own armor, handed down through the priest to the saint, and it turns out to be woven of the two things Paul keeps thanking these people for. And the ground of the hope: God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that… we should live together with him. We are not appointed to wrath but to salvation — the day that is destruction to those crying peace is deliverance to those who watch; the thief comes for the sleeping, the bridegroom for the waking.
The letter closes in a shower of short commands for the watching life. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks… Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. And the benediction holds the whole person to the coming: the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The whole person is preserved to the coming — kept entire, body and life and breath, for the day the watching saints are waiting for.
The day comes as a thief on those crying peace, but the children of light watch and are sober — armed with faith, love, and hope, kept whole and blameless unto his coming.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day turns on vigilance and perseverance in view of the coming day. Nehemiah will not come down from the great work, however reasonable the invitation to the plain of Ono; Joel reads the stripped land as the herald of the day of Yahweh at hand; and Paul charges the children of light to watch, for the day of the Lord comes as a thief on those crying peace. The builder who will not be lured down, the prophet who reads the locusts as a summons, and the watchman not caught in the dark are one figure: the saint who keeps awake because the day is coming.
The two days are the same day. Joel’s day of Yahweh, at hand, as a destruction from the Almighty, is Paul’s day of the Lord that cometh as a thief in the night — the great reckoning that strips the false security of those who say peace and safety, as the locusts stripped the field. The difference is not whether the day comes but who is ready for it. Those who cry peace are caught like a field of standing grain before the locust; those who watch and are sober meet it as deliverance, not appointed to wrath but to obtain salvation.
And readiness is single-minded work, not anxious idleness. Nehemiah’s answer to every distraction is I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down — and that is the watching life: too occupied with the wall to be lured off it, too awake to be surprised by the thief. The locusts emptied Joel’s people so they might cry out; the day at hand should empty us of the peace-and-safety drowse and set us to the great work with faith and love for a breastplate and hope for a helmet.
So do not come down from the work for any plain of Ono, and do not let the greed within ruin what the siege without could not. Read every warning as Joel read the locusts — a summons to gather and cry to Yahweh, not a thing to explain away. Watch and be sober, for the day comes as a thief; but be of good courage, for you are a child of the light, not appointed to wrath but to salvation, kept whole and blameless unto the coming of the Lord.
Refuse to come down from the great work, read the warning as a summons to cry out, and watch as a child of the day — the thief comes for the sleeping, but salvation for those kept whole unto his coming.