Nehemiah

          I have learned about many important people this week in history class. These people were: Cyrus the Great, Cambyses the 2nd, Darius the Great, Esra, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah. It was difficult to choose which one to write about, however I finally made up my mind to do Nehemiah.

          Nehemiah was a Jew who lived in Babylon, and his job was the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes of Persia. You see, at the time of Nehemiah, the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their city and temple. One of his relatives was helping to build the city back. When the relative visited, he told Nehemiah that the city was so destroyed that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to rebuild the walls and the rest of the city.

            This saddened Nehemiah, and when the king noticed his unusual behavior, he asked him what was bothering him. Not sure what the king would say, Nehemiah prayed and asked the Artaxerxes if he could go to Jerusalem for a time to help rebuild the walls back. The king replied positively and granted Nehemiah’s request.

          Nehemiah, along with a group of people for help and support, traveled to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. When they arrived, Nehemiah gathered the people together and they completed the wall in just fifty-two days. “How did they do it?” you may ask… Well, Nehemiah had the people break up into their original twelve tribes and go to their territory. While the people were building their houses, they rebuilt the wall around the perimeter of their part of Jerusalem. That way, everybody was working on the entire wall at once.

          I think Nehemiah’s story of how he rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem is very fascinating. Even today with all the fancy building machinery, building a giant wall with so little people in just fifty-two days is almost impossible to do. I hope you liked learning about this amazing person, and I encourage you to learn more about him every day.