Therefore the king said unto me, Why is your countenance sad, seeing you are not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very much afraid,
All Commentaries on Nehemiah 2:2 Go To Nehemiah 2
Bede
AD 735
And the king said to me, 'Why is your face sad when I see that you are not ill? This is not without reason, but some evil, I know not what, is in your heart.' And I became very much afraid, and so on until the king agrees that Jerusalem be rebuilt and he gives Nehemiah letters for the governors of the region beyond the river and it is said: And the king granted my requests according to the gracious hand of my God with me. And I went to the governors of the region beyond the river and gave them the king's letters.3 We have plainly learned from the teaching of Isaiah how Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, holds a figure of the Lord Savior because he ended the captivity of the people of God and decreed that the temple be restored.4 So too, we can properly take the successor of this same empire, Artaxerxes, who with the same devotion ordered that the city of Jerusalem be rebuilt, /125/ as a type of the Lord, who builds a city for himself from living stones (that is, the one Church made from all the elect) through the service of preachers. Thus it is appropriate that the name Artaxerxes means 'a light that tests silently'.5 For the Lord is indeed the light of life who tests the hearts of his faithful silently, at times illuminating them with the sweetness of celestial grace, at others clouding them with the burdens of this life, so that, instructed by temporal adversities, they might desire eternal goods more ardently.
