Lord wanted for His people and his chosen city, He sent a second delegation eighty years after that under the leadership of Ezra. This group was able to do some more of the work, but could not complete the task when the opposition mounted. Then came the turn of Nehemiah, God’s chosen leader for that task, and ‘for such a time as this’.
Ninety years of freedom is more than sufficient to reconstruct a town and resume a normal life. In fact even a tenth of that time was not needed, specially because the Jews had authorization for such reconstruction from the Persian ruler. People like Nehemiah who worked in distant countries obviously assumed the best for their own people. There were no newspapers to inform them of the daily developments. Thus Nehemiah was utterly shocked when he heard about the condition of the Jews and the temple of God. By this time, the temple and the city of God lay without protection for almost 90 years from the departure of the first group under Zerubbabel.
The situation was so bad that God’s people were totally discouraged. The city walls were in ruins, and the people of God enjoyed no protection from predators and plunderers. They gentile opponents were totally hostile, men who had great political clout around and also with the Persian empire. They were so conniving that they were able to subdue the most powerful Jews through inter-marriages, and eventually even came to possess portions of the Jewish temple where in principle no gentile could even put his foot. The things were as dismal as possible and Nehemiah could have easily escaped from any involvement by saying that he is only an individual, totally helpless against a hostile and violently aggressive social and political system.
A look