The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. And it came to pass in the month Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel,
All Commentaries on Nehemiah 1:1 Go To Nehemiah 1
Bede
AD 735
Nehemiah is interpreted in Latin as 'My consoler is the Lord' or as 'the consoler from the Lord'. For when Nehemiah restored Jerusalem's walls and, after delivering them from the disdain of their enemies, raised up the people of God to the observance of the divine law, it is surely clear that by his word and deed and person he not unsuitably designates the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who indicates that he was sent to console the poor in spirit when he said to his disciples as he was about to ascend to heaven: / will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete? i.e. a Consoler, by whom the psalmist showed that God's holy city (namely the Church) would be rebuilt and also that those who mourn would be consoled when he said: The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the broken-hearted? and so on. The figure of Nehemiah also is suitable for holy preachers, through whose teaching heavenly consolation is revealed to us as they promise the hope of mercy and divine propitiation to the penitent after a lapse into sin, as though they were restoring the fortifications and walls of Jerusalem after they have been demolished by the enemies. Now this month of Chesleu is the one we call December; among the Hebrews it is the ninth month, among us the last month of the year.1 The name of this month, which in Latin is interpreted as 'his hope', is clearly very appropriate to the solemn pledge of one who directed his mind to erecting the ruins of the holy city. For the principal foundation of good action is that we have confident hope in the Lord's help to fulfil what we desire. This is the very month in which our Lord was born in the flesh, most beautifully prefiguring to us long before by its own name that in this month the true Nehemiah (i.e. the consoler from God the Father), long hoped for by the elect, was to come into the world to build up the Holy Church.
Nehemiah writes that he was in the fortress of Susa when the men came who brought the news about Jerusalem. Susa is the capital city of the kingdom of the Persians, as we read in the Book of Esther. Not only Nehemiah but also the prophet Daniel calls it a 'fortress', 'not because the city itself is a fortress, for as we have stated it is a capital city and a very powerful one, but because it is so solidly built that it looks like a fortress'. Now Susa means 'riding' or 'returning'. The name aptly befits the defenses of the mind of the faithful, especially of those who are charged with the capture of Jerusalem, that is, for the salvation of those who are occasionally snatched away from the Church through the devil's attacks but by repenting are brought back to the Church again by the grace of God. For such people are in a returning fortress - that is, in the strength of a mind called back from the lowest delights to a longing for the heavenly homeland, from which they had fallen in their first parent; such people are in the very strong cavalry of the hearts of the saints who carry God as their rider, according to the prophet's saying: Mounting your horses, and your riding is salvation.6 For the Lord indeed mounts his horses when he illuminates the hearts of preachers with the grace of his mercy so that he can rule them; and his riding is salvation because he not only carries to eternal salvation those over whom he presides by ruling them, but also, so that he may likewise preside over them too, through them makes others sharers of this same everlasting salvation as well. Let us therefore see what follows when Nehemiah questioned them about those who had remained after the capture of Jerusalem.
