The Pulpit Commentary — Nehemiah — Section 126

EXPOSITION. DEDICATION OF THE WALL (eh. xii 27- miah appointed the temple officers (eh. xiii. 43). It is supposed by some that the author 1), and that appointment followed closely has here departed from the chronological on the dedication (eh. xii 44). We may order, and gone back to a date not much account for the long delay by supposing that subsequent to the completion of the wall in Nehemiah was afraid of offending .Axtaxerxes September, :e.a. 444, since the dedication of if he ventured on a ceremony, to which the a work under ordinary circumstances follows superstition of the surrounding heathen may closely upon its accomplishmeut. But no have attached extreme importance, without reason has been shown for the actual place his express permission, and that to obtain held by the narrative in the Book upon this this permission his personal in.fiuence we.a supposition, nor is it easy to imagine that necessary. the author would have separated the dedi- The dedication of a city wall was, so far a.a cation of the wall from its completion by five we know, a new thing in Israel ; but it had chapters and a half, unless they had been been customary from a remote time to de- separated in fact by an interval of some dicate hoUBes (Deut. XL 6) ; and natural duration. The interval seems, by the notes piety extended this practice to aggregations of time contained in cha. xii, xiii, to have of houses, and to the limit or fence by which been one of nearly thirteen years. Nehe- they were practically made one. The priestly miah's religioUB reforms were certainly sub- order had shown its sense of the fitness of sequent to the visit that he paid to the such a consecration when they raised their Persian court in B.C. 432 (eh. xiii 6). These portion of the wall, and had at once "sancti- reforms grew out of a reading of the law fied it" (eh. iii I). Nehemiah now, by the which took place at the time when Nehe- ceremony which he planned and carried out, OH. XII. 27-47.1 THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAH. 133