Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests, and they built the sheep gate; they sanctified it, and set up the doors of it; even unto the tower of Hammeah they sanctified it, unto the tower of Hananel.
All Commentaries on Nehemiah 3:1 Go To Nehemiah 3
Bede
AD 735
And they said to me, 'Those who had remained and were left behind at the time of the capture there in the province are in great distress and disgrace; and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been destroyed by fire'. The literal meaning is evident, namely that those who had remained after the capture, even though they seemed to be living at peace in view of the fact that the king of the Persians had shown himself to be their friend, and not long previously had sent to them Ezra the scribe with letters in order that he should have authority over all the region beyond the river, nonetheless they were in great distress because their enemies blamed them that the holy city still remained in ruins.3 But even now in the Holy Church people are rightly afflicted and pricked by a salutary sense of remorse when, even though they themselves have repented of their past wrongdoings, they consider the fact that their neighbors still are subject to sins, so that, through the negligence of those who, having reformed, could have been profitable to many, the devil has free entry into the Church, as through the walls of the ruined city. It is even more lamentable if those very ones who should have been profiting others through their teaching and personal example show to observers an example of destruction in themselves by living corruptly.1 For this is what is meant by the fact that the gates of Jerusalem /75/ were burned down by enemy flames: that those who ought, by living and teaching well, to have been introducing worthy people into the assembly of the elect and keeping unworthy people out, perish instead in the fire of avarice, self-indulgence, pride, strife, envy, and the rest of the vices that the evil enemy is wont to bring in. But what seems to happen or what action we should take with regard to these sins is shown when it immediately adds:
