e poor people had
already lost their houses and their vineyards, there was nothing left to
them but their children, and actually the son or the daughter was
pledged or mortgaged to the rich money-lender. If the heavy interest is
not paid, at any moment the child may be seized, and carried off to the
noble's house to be brought up as a slave. 'Nay,' cry some of the
mothers in the crowd, 'our case is worst of all; some of our daughters
have been taken as slaves already, and we have no power to redeem them.
Yet we love our children just as much as these rich people love theirs,
they are just as dear to us as theirs are to them' (ver. 5).

'And then,' says Nehemiah,'when I had heard their cry and listened to
their tale, I was very angry.' But surely it was wrong of Nehemiah to be
angry. Is not anger a bad thing? Is it not one of the works of the
devil, which we are bidden to lay aside?

Yet what says St. Paul? 'Be ye angry, and sin not.' So it is possible to
be angry, and yet to be sinless. And we read, Mark iii. 5, that, in the
synagogue at Capernaum, the Lord Jesus looked round on the hard-hearted
Pharisees with anger; and in Him was no sin.

Nehemiah was very angry, yet Nehemiah sinned not in being so, for it
was anger at sin, anger at the wrongdoing which was bringing disgrace on
his nation, anger at the conduct which was offending God and doing harm
to God's cause. It was righteous anger against the cruelty and
selfishness of those who, in those hard times, had profited from the
poverty and distress of their poor fellow countrymen.

For some time Nehemiah did nothing, but he carefully turned the matter
over in his mind. He says, 'I consulted with myself,' or as it is in the
margin, 'My heart consulted in me.' We can picture him pacing up and
down, saying again and again, What shall I do? What is the wisest course
to take? How can this great evil be stopped? Doubtless, too, he took
this trouble, as he had taken all his other anxieties and cares, and
laid it before the God of heaven.

Then he sends for the nobles and all those who had oppressed the people,
and he gives them very plainly his mind on the matter:

'I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact
usury, every one of his brother.'

And thereby they had broken the law, for no Jew was allowed to take
interest, or increase, of another Jew, much less to exact usury: see
Exod. xxii. 25; Ezek. xviii. 8, 17.

The Hebrew was to look upon e