By Name · Week 2 · Sunday · BULLIES

Last week the voice was a crowd. It was loud and it was everywhere, but it was not really aimed at anybody. This week the voice has a name and a target, and the target is you.

By a bully I mean someone using whatever power they have to make you small. It might be a boss, a classmate, a relative, a group chat. Not every disagreement counts, and not every hard conversation is bullying. But you know it when it is aimed at you, and so do I.

They mocked him before they ever attacked

Nehemiah is back in Jerusalem rebuilding a wall that has been rubble for a long time. The work has barely started when the voices start.

Now when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he was furious and filled with indignation. He ridiculed the JewsNehemiah 4:1 (BSB)

before his associates and the army of Samaria, saying, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Can they restore the wall by themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Can they bring these burnt stones back to life from the mounds of rubble?”Nehemiah 4:2 (BSB)

Then Tobiah the Ammonite, who was beside him, said, “If even a fox were to climb up on what they are building, it would break down their wall of stones!”Nehemiah 4:3 (BSB)

Read that again and notice what has not happened yet. Nobody has thrown a stone. There is no army at the gate. There is just a man with an audience making jokes about the work, and his friend adding a punchline about a fox.

Ridicule is cheap, and it only needs one thing from you. It needs you to stop building long enough to answer it.

His first move was not a comeback

This is the part I think is easy to read past. Nehemiah does not answer Sanballat. He talks to God about Sanballat.

Hear us, O God, for we are despised. Turn their scorn back upon their own heads, and let them be taken as plunder to a land of captivity.Nehemiah 4:4 (BSB)

Do not cover up their iniquity or let their sin be blotted out from Your sight, for they have provoked the builders.Nehemiah 4:5 (BSB)

That is not a polite prayer. He is hurt, and he says so. He asks God to deal with them. And then he leaves it there. He does not go do it himself.

When they heaped abuse on Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats, but entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly.1 Peter 2:23 (BSB)

Peter says Jesus did the same thing under far worse treatment. He did not hit back. He handed it to the One who judges justly. That is not weakness. It is a man who knows whose job justice is.

And Nehemiah does not stop at praying. A few verses later:

So we prayed to our God and posted a guard against them day and night.Nehemiah 4:9 (BSB)

Both. He prayed, and he posted a guard. Praying about it and doing something about it were never opposites.

Nobody stands at a low place alone

When the threats get worse, Nehemiah looks for the weak spots, the places where the wall is lowest and easiest to get over.

So I stationed men behind the lowest sections of the wall, at the vulnerable areas. I stationed them by families with their swords, spears, and bows.Nehemiah 4:13 (BSB)

The text says what they carried, and I am not reading this as a call to fight anybody. What caught me is who he put there. Families. Nobody was posted at a low place by himself.

Then I said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people: “The work is great and extensive, and we are spread out far from one another along the wall.Nehemiah 4:19 (BSB)

Wherever you hear the sound of the horn, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us!”Nehemiah 4:20 (BSB)

The work was spread out, so they could not all stand together all the time. So he gave them a sound. When you hear it, you come. Whoever is in trouble does not have to handle it alone, and everybody else knows where to go.

An enemy’s voice wants two things: that you answer it, and that you face it alone.

That is the whole week. Nehemiah does neither.

And one turn you might not expect

In the very next chapter, while the wall is still going up, Nehemiah finds trouble inside the city too. The voice was not only outside the wall. We will get there on Thursday.

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.John 10:28 (BSB)

That is the series under all of this. Whatever voice is aimed at you this week, it does not get to decide whose you are.

Monday, a woman in her thirties sits through her weekly team meeting, waiting for her manager to say the nickname again.