The Book of Nehemias (Nehemiah), or Second Book of Esdras

The Book of Nehemias opens in the Persian palace of Susa, with a courtier weeping over news of a ruined city, and closes in Jerusalem with the same man, now governor, praying: "remember me, O my God, unto good. Amen." Between them lie the walls rebuilt under threat, the public reading of the Law of Moses, and a covenant renewed by a people home from exile. Modern Bibles call it Nehemiah; the Douay-Rheims, following the Vulgate (Liber Nehemiae, qui et Esdrae secundus dicitur), calls it Nehemias or the Second Book of Esdras. Its thirteen chapters can be read below, the Latin beside the English, beginning with chapter 1.

Why is Nehemiah called 2 Esdras in the Catholic Bible?

In the Hebrew Bible, Ezra and Nehemiah formed a single book. Origen, as Eusebius reports, still counted the first and second of Esdras as one, and St Jerome noted in his preface to the Books of Kings that the Greeks and Latins divided it in two. The Latin Church kept that division and the name of Esdras for both, so the Douay-Rheims has 1 Esdras, which modern Bibles call Ezra, and 2 Esdras, which they call Nehemiah. Bishop Challoner's preface explains: "This Book takes its name from the writer, who was cupbearer to Artaxerxes (surnamed Longimanus) king of Persia... It is also called the second book of Esdras; because it is a continuation of the history, begun by Esdras."

It must not be confused with the "2 Esdras" of the King James Apocrypha, which is the Fourth Book of Esdras of the Latin tradition, a set of visions the Church never received as Scripture (see below).

Who wrote the Book of Nehemiah?

The book signs itself: "The words of Nehemias the son of Helchias" (2 Esdras 1:1). Most of it is in the first person, from "I was the king's cupbearer" (1:11) onward. Challoner names Nehemias as the writer, and Jewish tradition agrees: the Talmud (Baba Bathra 15a) says that Esdras wrote his own book and the genealogies of Paralipomenon, and that the work was completed by Nehemias the son of Helchias. 2 Machabees 2:13 also knows "the memoirs and commentaries of Nehemias".

The Church has received the book as the memoir of Nehemias joined to official records: the register of the first return (chapter 7), the signatories of the covenant (chapter 10), the lists of inhabitants and priests (chapters 11–12). The Catholic Encyclopedia (A. Van Hoonacker, 1911) holds the first-person sections to be by Nehemias himself while assigning the final arrangement to a later compiler, and many modern scholars likewise speak of a later editor. The Pontifical Biblical Commission (23 June 1905) taught that books presented as history are to be received as true history, and few pages of the Old Testament are so exactly dated.

When was it written, and when did it take place?

The events are dated by the reign of Artaxerxes I, called Longimanus, king of Persia. Nehemias heard of Jerusalem's distress "in the month of Casleu, in the twentieth year" (1:1) and stood before the king "in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king" (2:1), that is, in 445 or 444 BC. He governed Judea for twelve years, "from the twentieth year even to the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes" (5:14), went back to the king in 433 BC, and later returned for a second mission (13:6). Esdras the priest had come in the seventh year of the same king (1 Esdras 7:7) and stands beside Nehemias at the reading of the Law.

The memoirs were written after the second mission, late in the fifth century before Christ. The priestly genealogy of chapter 12 runs on to Jeddoa and "the reign of Darius the Persian" (12:11, 22), so the registers were brought up to date after Nehemias' time.

What is the Book of Nehemiah about? A summary

The prayer and the mission (chapters 1–2)

Word reaches Susa that "the wall of Jerusalem is broken down." Nehemias weeps, fasts and prays, confessing his people's sins and recalling God's promise to Moses to gather the scattered if they return (chapters 1–2; compare Deuteronomy 30). When the king notices his sad face, Nehemias "prayed to the God of heaven" before answering, and asked to be sent to rebuild the city of his fathers' sepulchres. He arrives with royal letters, inspects the ruins by night, and rallies the people: "The God of heaven he helpeth us... let us rise up and build" (2:20). At once three enemies appear: Sanaballat the Horonite, Tobias the Ammonite and Gossem the Arabian.

The wall rebuilt under threat (chapters 3–7)

Chapter 3 records who built each stretch of wall and each of its ten gates: the high priest at the flock gate, goldsmiths and perfumers, Sellum "he and his daughters", while the great men of Thecua "did not put their necks to the work." Mockery turns to a plot of war, and in chapter 4 the builders work armed: "with one of his hands he did the work, and with the other he held a sword" (4:17). In chapter 5 the danger is within: the rich are taking the fields and even the children of the poor for debt, and Nehemias makes them restore the pledges.

His enemies then try guile, a false invitation to the plain of Ono ("I am doing a great work, and I cannot come down"), a slanderous letter, a hired prophet urging him to hide in the Temple (chapter 6), but "the wall was finished the five and twentieth day of the month of Elul, in two and fifty days." Nehemias then sets watchmen and finds the register of those who first came back with Zorobabel (chapter 7, the same list as 1 Esdras 2).

The Law read and the covenant renewed (chapters 8–10)

On the first day of the seventh month the whole people gathers before the water gate, and Esdras the scribe stands "upon a step of wood" and reads the book of the Law "from the morning until midday" while the Levites explain it (chapter 8). The people weep; Nehemias and Esdras bid them rejoice, and they keep the feast of Tabernacles as it had not been kept "since the days of Josue the son of Nun."

Later in the month they assemble with fasting and sackcloth, and the Levites pray the long confession of chapter 9, which retells the history from Abraham to the exile as God's mercy answering Israel's ingratitude. In chapter 10 the leaders sign a written covenant: no marriage with the pagan peoples, no trade on the sabbath, the sabbatical year, offerings for the Temple, firstfruits and tithes.

Jerusalem peopled and dedicated (chapters 11–12)

One in ten of the people is chosen by lot to live in Jerusalem, "the holy city", and those who offer themselves freely are blessed (chapter 11). After the registers of priests and Levites, chapter 12 describes the dedication of the wall: two great choirs process in opposite directions along its top and meet at the house of God, "and the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar off."

The second mission and the reforms (chapter 13)

Back from the Persian court, Nehemias finds Tobias the Ammonite lodged in a storeroom of the Temple, the Levites unpaid, the sabbath a market day, and Jews married to women of Azotus, Ammon and Moab. He throws out Tobias' goods, restores the tithes, shuts the gates on the sabbath, and drives away the high priest's grandson, son-in-law to Sanaballat (chapter 13).

Meaning and message: the Catholic reading

Rebuilding the city of God. The theme of the book is the restoration of God's people after punishment: walls, worship, Law and covenant rebuilt together. Ecclesiasticus sums up its hero: "let Nehemias be a long time remembered, who raised up for us our walls that were cast down, and set up the gates and the bars, who rebuilt our houses" (Ecclesiasticus 49:15). St Bede, in his commentary On Ezra and Nehemiah (In Ezram et Neemiam), reads the rebuilt Temple and city as figures of the Church, and the men who restored them as figures of her teachers and pastors.

The walls and the coming of Christ. The angel told Daniel that "from the going forth of the word, to build up Jerusalem again, unto Christ the prince, there shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks", and the walls would be built "in straitness of times" (Daniel 9:25). Challoner's note identifies that word with the commission of chapter 2: "the twentieth year of king Artaxerxes, when by his commandment Nehemias rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem", from which, he writes, sixty-nine weeks of years lead to the baptism of Christ. The decree Nehemias obtained thus opens the count of years that leads to the Messias.

Prayer, fasting and penance. Nehemias does nothing without prayer. He fasts and prays from Casleu until Nisan before speaking to the king, prays silently in the instant before answering him (2:4), and punctuates his memoir with short petitions: "Remember me, O my God, for good" (5:19), taken up again three times in the last chapter and closing the book: "remember me, O my God, unto good" (13:31). The people's fast in chapter 9 joins confession of sin with praise of God's mercy, the pattern of Christian penance; see our pages on what God says about prayer and what God says about fasting.

A model of leadership. Nehemias plans before he speaks, shares the labour, refuses his governor's allowance (5:14–18), makes the rich forgive debts, will not flee when threatened ("Should such a man as I flee?", 6:11), and corrects even the high priest's family. His zeal for the house of God, the sabbath and marriage within the faith (13:23–27, recalling Solomon's fall in 3 Kings 11) is the zeal of a reformer; on the tithes he restored, see what the Bible says about tithing.

Famous chapters and verses of Nehemiah

Nehemiah 1, the prayer of Nehemias. "I beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven, strong, great, and terrible, who keepest covenant and mercy with those that love thee" (2 Esdras 1:5): intercession that begins with confession, "I and my father's house have sinned."

Nehemiah 4, the sword and the trowel. "With one of his hands he did the work, and with the other he held a sword"; and "our God will fight for us" (2 Esdras 4:17, 20).

Nehemiah 8:10, "the joy of the Lord is our strength." "It is the holy day of the Lord, and be not sad: for the joy of the Lord is our strength" (2 Esdras 8:10); in the Vulgate, gaudium etenim Domini est fortitudo nostra.

Nehemiah 9, the great confession. "Thou, a forgiving God, gracious, and merciful, longsuffering, and full of compassion, didst not forsake them" (2 Esdras 9:17). It recalls the manna of the desert: "thou gavest them bread from heaven in their hunger" (9:15).

Its place in the canon

Nehemias is a protocanonical book, received by Jews and Christians alike and found in every Bible. The Church lists it under the name of Esdras: "two books of Esdras" in the canon of the Council of Rome (382) and of the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397); "Esdras, Nehemias" in the Council of Florence's decree for the Jacobites (1442); "the first of Esdras, and the second which is called Nehemias" in the Council of Trent, Session IV (1546). It follows Paralipomenon and 1 Esdras and precedes Tobias, Judith and Esther, whose Persian court of Susa is the one Nehemias served (see Queen Esther in the Bible).

The confusion over names comes from the Greek and Latin Bibles. The Septuagint has an "Esdras A", a Greek retelling of the return, and an "Esdras B", which is Ezra and Nehemiah. The Latins called the Greek retelling 3 Esdras and an apocalyptic work of the late first century after Christ 4 Esdras. St Jerome rejected both in his preface to Esdras, and Trent left them out of the canon; the Clementine Vulgate of 1592, like the first Douay-Rheims Bible, printed them in an appendix so that they would not be lost.

The Protestant Apocrypha calls them 1 and 2 Esdras, so the King James "2 Esdras" is 4 Esdras, not Nehemiah. The Introit of the Mass for the Dead, Requiem aeternam, echoes a passage of it (4 Esdras 2:34–35), which does not make it Scripture. On how the canon was fixed, see our article on the Deuterocanonical books, and on Jerome's text, the Latin Vulgate Bible.

How to read the Book of Nehemiah

Read it straight after 1 Esdras, as one history. Chapters 1–6 and 13 read quickly as a story; chapters 3, 7 and 10–12 are lists, worth reading slowly, for they show a whole people at work, each building "over against his own house." Read chapters 8 and 9 as a liturgy of the Word and an examination of conscience. Beside chapter 2, read Daniel 9; for the later memory of Nehemias, 2 Machabees 1, where the sacred fire is recovered in his day.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who wrote the books of Ezra and Nehemiah?

Tradition ascribes the first to Esdras the priest and scribe and the second to Nehemias the governor. The two were one book in the Hebrew Bible and were divided by the Greeks and Latins, which is why the Douay-Rheims calls them 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras.

What is the difference between the books of Ezra and Nehemiah?

Ezra (1 Esdras) covers the first return under Zorobabel, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the coming of Esdras with his reform of mixed marriages. Nehemiah (2 Esdras) follows, about thirteen years after Esdras' arrival, with the rebuilding of the city walls, the public reading of the Law and the covenant renewed under Nehemias as governor. The first is centred on the Temple, the second on the city and its people.

How many chapters and verses are in the Book of Nehemiah?

The Book of Nehemiah has 13 chapters. In the Vulgate and Douay-Rheims numbering they contain 404 verses; English Bibles that follow the Hebrew verse divisions count 406.

What is the main message of the Book of Nehemiah?

That God restores His people when they return to Him with prayer, penance and obedience to His Law. The city is rebuilt so that God may be worshipped in it, and the book ends with the Temple served, the sabbath kept and the tithes paid.

What are the gates in the Book of Nehemiah?

Chapter 3 names ten gates repaired along the wall: the flock gate, the fish gate, the old gate, the gate of the valley, the gate of the dunghill, the gate of the fountain, the water gate, the horse gate, the east gate and the judgment gate. The gate of Ephraim (8:16) and the watch gate appear in the dedication procession of chapter 12, which is why some lists count twelve.

Is the Book of Nehemiah in the Catholic Bible?

Yes. It is in the Catholic Old Testament as the Second Book of Esdras, "which is called Nehemias" in the words of the Council of Trent, and in every Protestant Bible as Nehemiah. The "2 Esdras" of the King James Apocrypha is a different book, 4 Esdras in the Latin tradition, and is not part of the canon.

Is Nehemiah the last book of the Old Testament?

No. In the Catholic Bible it is followed by Tobias, Judith, Esther, the wisdom books, the prophets and the two books of Machabees, whose history reaches the second century before Christ. The prophet Malachias is commonly placed in Nehemias' age.

Who were Sanaballat and Tobias in the Book of Nehemiah?

Sanaballat the Horonite and Tobias the Ammonite, with Gossem the Arabian, were neighbouring leaders who mocked the work, plotted an attack, hired a false prophet and sent threatening letters (chapters 2, 4 and 6). During Nehemias' absence the high priest even gave Tobias a room in the Temple, from which Nehemias threw him out (chapter 13).

Read the whole Book of Nehemias verse by verse, in Latin and English, in the Iter Fidei Catholic Bible app.

Sources. The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version with Bishop Challoner's notes and prefaces; the Latin Vulgate (Clementine edition, 1592); St Jerome, prefaces to the Books of Kings and to Esdras; Origen in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VI, 25; St Bede, In Ezram et Neemiam; the Talmud, Baba Bathra 15a; Councils of Rome (382), Hippo (393) and Carthage (397); Council of Florence, decree for the Jacobites (1442); Council of Trent, Sess. IV (1546); Pontifical Biblical Commission, response of 23 June 1905 on the historical narratives of Scripture; C. Souvay, "Esdras," Catholic Encyclopedia (1909); A. Van Hoonacker, "Book of Nehemias," Catholic Encyclopedia (1911).