People made fun of Nehemiah for rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. It seems like when we’re doing God’s work, we’re under constant attack.
After reading the book of Nehemiah, my children made drawings entitled “Nehemiah Rebuilds the Walls.” They drew a wall being built, and people laughing at the Jews for rebuilding Jerusalem. The walls had been torn down and set on fire when King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC. King Nebuchadnezzar also burned the Temple at that time and stole all the Temple treasures.
Seventy years had passed, and according to the book of Jeremiah, God would move the heart of King Cyrus to allow the Jews to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild it. Ezra had taken thousands of Jews back to Jerusalem, but for some reason the walls had still not been rebuilt. Nehemiah heard about the broken-down walls of Jerusalem, and he wanted to do something about it. He wept and felt a burden for God’s people.
Even though Nehemiah was cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, the king allowed him to take a group of people back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. Scripture makes it clear that prayer is what caused the king’s heart to be won over.
When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, he rode on a donkey at night, surveying the walls to see what sort of damage there was, and seeing what would be required to build the walls back up. He later met with the officials of the city to draw up a plan for the reconstruction of Jerusalem.
When they started rebuilding, they made a lot of progress. Sanballat and Tobiah were the enemies of Israel, and they taunted and made fun of the Israelites for rebuilding the walls. They said that if a fox stood on the walls, the walls would topple down.
My son who drew this picture of Sanballat and Tobiah has another guy hiding in a bucket. I’m not sure why the short guy is hiding in the bucket, but I just wanted you to know that it’s not a disembodied head. There are plenty of disembodied heads in Scripture (John the Baptist, Goliath, Saul, etc.), but this is not one of them.
The people of Israel worked really hard and finished building the walls of Jerusalem in 52 days! That’s just crazy incredible! It showed that the power of God and His blessing was on this project.
Sign up below for a free Bible crafts e-book!
