defensive weapon: see rem. on Jos 2:8; 2Ch 32:5. The builders, on the contrary, needed both hands for their work: hence they had swords girt to their sides. “And he that sounded the trumpet was beside me.” Nehemiah, as superintendent of the work, stood at the head of his servants, ready to ward off any attack; hence the trumpeter was beside him, to be able to give to those employed on the wall the signal for speedy muster in case danger should threaten.
Verses 19-21
Hence he said to the nobles, the rulers, and the rest of the people, i.e., all employed in building, “The work is much (great) and wide, and we are separated upon the wall one far from another; in what place ye hear the sound of the trumpet, assemble yourselves to me: our God will fight for us.” - In Neh 4:15 the whole is summed up, and for this purpose the matter of Neh 4:10 is briefly repeated, to unite with it the further statement that they so laboured from early morning till late in the evening. “We (Nehemiah and his servants) laboured in the work, and half of them (of the servants) held the spears from the grey of dawn till the stars appeared.”
Verse 22
He took moreover, a further precaution: he said to the people (i.e., to the labourers on the wall, and not merely to the warriors of the community, as Bertheau supposes): Let every one with his servant lodge within Jerusalem, i.e., to remain together during the night also, and not be scattered through the surrounding district, “that they may be guardianship for us by night and labour by day.” The abstracts, guardianship and labour, stand for the concretes, guards and labourers. As לנוּ, to us, refers to the whole community separated on the walls, so is ונערו אישׁ to be understood of all the workers, and not of the fighting men only. From ונערו אישׁ it only appears that the fathers of families and master builders had servants with them as labourers.
Verse 23
Nehemiah, moreover, and his brethren (his kinsmen and the members of his house), and his servants, and the men of the guard in his retinue, were constantly in their clothes (“not putting off our clothes” to rest). The last words, המּים שׁלחו אישׁ are very obscure, and give no tolerable sense, whether we explain המּים of water for drinking or washing. Luther translates,
