And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of heaven,
All Commentaries on Nehemiah 1:4 Go To Nehemiah 1
Bede
AD 735
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 were in great distress because their enemies were blaming them and because the holy city still remained in ruins. 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 a 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. For this is what is meant by the fact that the gates of Jerusalem 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, selfindulgence, pride, strife, envy, and the rest of the vices that the evil enemy is apt to bring in.
