Prophets For Hire…
“Afterward I came unto the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah the son of Mehetabeel, who was shut up; and he said, Let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple, and let us shut the doors of the temple: for they will come to slay thee; yea, in the night will they come to slay thee. And I said, should such a man as I flee? And who is there that, being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in. And, lo, I perceived that God had not sent him; but that he pronounced this prophecy against me: for Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. Therefore was he hired that I should be afraid, and do so, and sin, and that they might have matter for an evil report, that they might reproach me. My God, think thou upon Tobiah and Sanballat according to these their works, and on the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets that would have put me in fear. So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days.” Nehemiah 6:10-15
This prayer has multiple noteworthy elements contained within it. Nehemiah here is far from using supercilious piety, instead he expresses shameless honesty before the Lord. Tobiah and Sanballat had been up to their old games, and rather than finding consolation or pity from people, Nehemiah jumps from his account about what they had just done to him into a simple stun gun of a prayer. (Highlighted above in blue.)
Nehemiah’s detractors had just attempted to use fear to drive him to a decision lacking moral integrity, which was to enter the temple for selfish reasons motivated by fear. This would have put a stain upon his reputation in the long run and would have discredited what he was doing. Somehow this charlatan Noadiah was in on the whole thing. She must have somehow known that to enter the temple was wrong, so for hire she conspired against the Lord’s chosen leader. How did she know? Her name is Jewish in every sense and the proper enunciation of her name is No-ad-yah, which means convened of the Lord. Not only was she a false prophetess, but also a traitor to her own people. Apparently she had a coven of co-conspirators and lackeys known infamously as, “the rest of the prophets.” This tactic, by the way, is often one of Satan’s main modus operandi. Discredit, disqualify, and dismember Christians reputations limb by limb until they are unable to consciously represent their Lord any more. We must not be ignorant of his devices.
What motivates people like Noadiah and her cronies? Peter tells us (2 Peter 2:1-3) that false prophets operate out of a few basic moral principles: covetousness, sneakiness, denial of God, and hypocritically deceitful conversation. He warned that they had harassed the children of Israel and they would also heckle the church. These were the types of impish individuals Sanballat and Tobiah worked with to try to topple the pillars of Nehemiah’s character.
Nehemiah simply prays that God would think upon these people according to their works. We must read between the lines to recognize the depth of humility and the prevalence of faith in Nehemiah. He recognizes who it is that can really deal with wickedness. Rather than take these people to Artaxerxes’ court and sue them over an attempt at defamation of character, or whine incessantly about how provocative it was that someone thought they could pull the wool over his eyes. He simply turns to God and asks him to deal with them. Nehemiah also had expressed great discernment in figuring out that they were trying to deceive him. This was a man of much character. I could only hope to be a sliver of this mans tree. His prayer was also an efficient way of dealing with the hecklers. Nehemiah could have wasted inordinate amounts of time trying to shoo them away, but prays instead and just gets back to work. Also, Nehemiah had the wisdom to recognize the enemy had cornered him by trying to get him to make a rash decision based on fear. As a general rule, fear is never a good emotion upon which to make most decisions in life. Nehemiah had the discernment to recognize this fear for what it was…a bald faced lie!
Finally what Nehemiah actually asks God to do is revealing about Nehemiah’s trust in God’s absolutely perfect judgment. We ought to pray like this, succinctly, confidently, and trustingly. God knows if we have integrity or not, so if we have integrity we can pray from that integrity, and ask God to be the judge about our provocateurs. There could be nothing more nettling than for saints to pray that God would deal with our, and ultimately His enemies, according to their works. For what judgment is more perfect than that of the perfect judge?
