I begin this final study of Nehemiah with the history of a well-known politician. I wonder if you can identify him.
He was born in 1809 and suffered his first major defeat in 1832, a year in which he lost his job and was defeated in his first political race, a bid for the state legislature. The next year, 1833, he failed in business. In 1835 his childhood sweetheart died. In 1836 he had a nervous breakdown. In 1843 he was defeated in a bid for the United States Congress. In 1848 he tried again and was again defeated. In 1849 he decided to become a Land Officer but was rejected for that. In 1854 he was defeated in a race for the United States Senate. In 1856 he lost a nomination for the vice presidency. In 1858 he was again defeated in a race for the Senate.
A list of defeats like this would be enough to discourage any man. But this man said, “I will always do my best no matter what…and someday my chance will come.” One day it did. In 1861 Abraham Lincoln became the sixteenth president of the United States.1 Perseverance! It is a mark of true leadership. Sir Winston Churchill, another great leader, said it memorably: “Never give up. Never, never, never give up.” It could have been a summary of the life of Nehemiah.
Nehemiah did not have the series of defeats in his life by which Abraham Lincoln was proved and strengthened. But he would have understood at once what Lincoln and Churchill believed about perseverance. Nehemiah was a whirlwind leader, as we have seen. But he did not merely do his own thing and then move on to be remembered no more. On the contrary, he kept on fighting his battles to the very end. One commentator says, “To the end of his days Nehemiah retained the same zeal that mobilized the Jews to rebuild the walls and that made him intervene earlier to abolish exploitation of the poor. Nehemiah was not a flash-in-the-pan leader but one who remained, as long as he lived, consistent to his original vision.”2
Because this last chapter of Nehemiah is about perseverance it is in some ways the most important in the book. To begin with, Nehemiah 13 concerns a time somewhat removed from the first chapters. The time indication is in verse 6, where Nehemiah explains that he had returned to Babylon in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes and that what he is recounting now was “sometime later.” How many years later was this? There is no way of knowing, since Nehemiah is himself vague. Presumably a considerable period of time elapsed, since the problems of the final chapter are major ones and would not have happened overnight. Guesses for the year of Nehemiah’s return to Jerusalem run from 4253 B.C. to 420 B.C.,4 dates near the end of the reign of King Artaxerxes.
The significant thing is that Nehemiah was now considerably older. He must have been at least forty when he left Susa for Jerusalem the first time. The end of his first governorship would have brought him to the age of fifty-two, and if we are now in the years 425 B.C. to 420 B.C., Nehemiah must have been near sixty-five. This is the age most people today retire. But Nehemiah did not retire. In this chapter we see him returning to Jerusalem and achieving some of his most important victories.
1John R. Noe, Peak Performance Principles for High Achievers (New York: Frederick Fell Publishers, 1984), 74.
2John White, Excellence in Leadership: Reaching Goals with Prayer, Courage and Determination (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 127.
3Howard F. Vos, Bible Study Commentary: Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1987), 134.
4Cyril J. Barber, Nehemiah and the Dynamics of Effective Leadership (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1976), 168.
