These problems were dramatically illustrated by what Nehemiah found to be going on at the temple. Eliashib, the high priest (v. 28) with whom he had worked closely during his earlier governorship and whom he had placed in charge of the temple storerooms, had affiliated himself with Tobiah the Ammonite, Nehemiah’s old enemy (vv. 4-5). Later we learn that Eliashib had also given a daughter in marriage to Nehemiah’s other archenemy, Sanballat the Horonite of Samaria (v. 28). Here we are told that he had provided Tobiah with rooms in the temple, putting him in a suite of rooms where the temple articles, tithes and offerings had formerly been stored. Why had Eliashib done it? Probably because, as he would have said, “We are living in a new day. Nehemiah has returned to Babylon. His old style of aggressive leadership was all right in the past, but it is not politically astute for this time. What we need today is compromise, a building of bridges, a handout to old friends.”
We can be sure that Tobiah had been working his side of the alliance too. He would have been maneuvering for entry into the highest leadership positions in the city. He must have been delighted with the splendid arrangements Eliashib made for him. From the temple precincts he had a base from which to ferment intrigue and increase his bad influence. One of the very best sections of the book is what comes next, in my opinion. When Nehemiah got back to Jerusalem and discovered what had been done he wasted not the slightest bit of time either in investigation or negotiation. He simply threw Tobiah and all his possessions out! He dumped his possessions outside the door onto the sidewalk, fumigated the room, and then restored the temple articles. Just like that! Charles Swindoll, who is entertaining on this point, says, “Nehemiah didn’t even want the smell of Tobiah to hang around the building.1
Was Nehemiah angry? He was. He says he was “greatly displeased” (v. 8), and he showed it.
Was he right to be angry? The answer is yes to that too.
Many Christians are uneasy with anger, and some have not hesitated to criticize Nehemiah at this point. They are forgetting a few things. First, Nehemiah’s angry cleansing of the temple is a foretaste of the similar action taken later by Jesus Christ. Jesus was angry, and He was not wrong to be so. Second, although he was displeased with Eliashib and calls what he had done “the evil thing,” Nehemiah is not as outspoken in condemning the evil of these days as God had already been through Malachi. Malachi had said that God was sending a curse on this priesthood (Mal. 2:2). Indeed, his whole prophecy is a denunciation of the evils for which spiritual leaders like Eliashib were responsible.
Third, critics of Nehemiah forget that deep-seated wrongs are seldom corrected except by people who have first become sufficiently angry. The cool, the complacent, the compromisers don’t change anything.
It is possible to be wrongly angry, of course. That is often the case when a wrong only against ourselves is involved. We can be wrong if we do nothing more than get angry. Righteous anger, the kind God approves, always acts to correct the injustice. But wrong anger is not our major problem in today’s Christianity. The bigger problems are compromise and cowardice.
Apparently, Nehemiah did not fear to place his actions before God for judgment, for he says in verse 14, “Remember me in this, O my God, and do not blot out what I have so faithfully done for the house of my God and its services.” We should all be so bold!
1Charles R. Swindoll, Hand me Another Brick (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 194.
