This is such an obscure book, that I was raised insanely religious and still didn’t even know it existed until just now. This whole book is written in the first person because it’s basically a letter from Nehemiah to god, but I’m not going to read it that way.
So Nehemiah was the cupholder for king Artaxerxes of the Persian empire. After a while of holding his cup and doing whatever the fuck else a cupholder does, Artaxerxes was like, “Dude. You always seemed bummed. What’s up? You can talk to me, it’s cool.” Nehemiah said, “Long live… you. I guess. But I’m bummed cuz those Babylonians totally fucked up my city. And that makes me sad.” So Artaxerxes said, “Well what do you even want?” Nehemiah was like, “Well I wanna go rebuild Jerusalem… as long as you’re cool with it.” Artaxerxes was like, “I guess that might be cool. How long will it take you?” Side note. How long does it take to rebuild a flagship city? A fucking while. Even now. Nehemiah just said that he set a time. Nehemiah also asked for safe travel and Artaxerxes granted him a small army. By this we know that Nehemiah was either a great cup holder and Artaxerxes wanted to make him happy, or a shitty cup holder and Artaxerxes just wanted him the fuck out of there. Anyways, this pissed off the Ammonite leader, that the Jews had someone watching their back.
So Nehemiah wandered around inspecting the ruins of Jerusalem. He checked out the Jackal (or fig or serpent. That’s just what it says.) And the Dung Gate. I think Dung-gate would be my favorite political scandal ever. After a thorough inspecting in which he didn’t tell anyone what the fuck he was doing there, he said to the people, “You see, the problem here is that Jerusalem got destroyed. We should fix that problem by rebuilding the walls.” For the most part the people were pretty down with this, but a couple of Arabs were like, “Why are you trying to fuck with this? Won’t this just piss king Artaxerxes off?” Instead of saying, “No. He totally said I could do this.” Nehemiah just ominously answered, “God will help us be successful. But since you asked a very reasonable question, you and all your people will have no share, claim, or historic right to this city.” Israel still feels that way today and it pisses a lot of people off. So fuck you, Nehemiah.
So they got to rebuilding. They rebuilt the Tower of Hananel. With the help of the people of Jericho, it says. Now Jericho was a city that collapsed simply by people walking around it, playing trumpets, and shouting. I don’t want anyone’s help whose name is attached to a structure like that. Anyways, they rebuilt the Fish Gate, the Jeshanah Gate, the Valley Gate, the Dung Gate, the Fountain Gate, the Pool of Siloam, the Wall of Ophel, and the Horse Gate.
This guy Sanballat heard about this and decided to spend his days making fun of the people rebuilding. He was like, “You feeble Jews. Those walls won’t stand because they’re weak and burned like you!” Sanballat was the BCE version of Cartman apparently. Then this Ammonite named Tobiah joined in and said, “Yeah, I bet a fox would break down those walls.” This pissed Nehemiah off and he said to god, “These guys are pissing me off! I hope you fuck their lives right up!” Well this started getting to the workers.Their spirits were fading and they were getting oh so bummed. Also, everyone around Jerusalem was threatening to kill them. And that sucks. Nehemiah convinced everyone to press on, but even he mentioned that nobody got water or slept or anything without being fully dressed and armed. That’s a shitty way to live your life.
Nehemiah also went and scolded a bunch of landlords who were apparently enslaving peoples daughters and taking all their food. When Nehemiah told them to cut that shit out, they fucking listened. He also had huge feasts and killed a lot of animals. Artaxerxes noticed that he was doing well and there was a lot more stability in Judah lately. So he made Nehemiah the governor. What’s funny about this, is that everyone building the temple had to carry a weapon on them at all time. But still the Persian king decided that this was a good stable region now. I can only imagine how chaotic it must’ve been before.
So back to the Sanballat and Tobiah assholes. As Nehemiah kept rebuilding the walls, Sanballat sent him a message threatening to say that he was gonna tell Artaxerxes that Jerusalem was gonna secede from the Persian empire. Nehemiah was like, “Dude. That’s not fucking happening. You’re literally making that shit up in your head. Fuck you” Then a guy came by and told Nehemiah that there were some guys coming to kill him. Nehemiah decided that this guy was sent by Sanballat and Tobiah and told him to fuck off, then told god to curse Sanballat and Tobiah.
So apparently it only took them 52 days to rebuild Jerusalem. When they were finished, all the assholes who were fucking with them all of a sudden got scared and left them alone. Tobiah still tried his best to trash Nehemiah’s reputation, though.
Nehemiah announced to people, “Don’t open the gates until the sun is hot!” The sun is always hot, so they opened the gates shortly there after. A bunch more exiled jews came back to live in Jerusalem. It lists them in the book, but I don’t care to. Ezra started reading the anti-interracial marriage laws and doing his thing, they confessed their sins and burned a lot of helpless animals for god because god loves that shit, and Nehemiah started enforcing tithing to the Levites again. This is where the story ends.
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