y, as their families increased, the Jews found this narrow
strip of country was not sufficient to maintain them, and, as is always
the case, over-population and over-crowding was followed by great
poverty.

(2) Then there had evidently been a severe famine, which had made
matters worse, for there had been numbers of mouths to feed and barely
anything to feed them on. No country is more subject to famine than
Palestine, for the harvest there is entirely dependent on the rainfall.
There are but few springs, there is no river but the Jordan, and that
runs in a deep ravine; the whole fertility of the country hangs on the
amount of rain that falls in autumn and winter. No rain means no corn,
no corn means starvation, and the people know it well. Nowhere on earth
are there such fervent prayers for rain, prayers which are offered by
Turk, Jew, and Christian alike, as there are in Palestine to this very
day, if the rainy season is passing away and a sufficient quantity of
rain has not fallen.

(3) Then Nehemiah found there was a third cause of distress. Every year,
in addition to earning money to keep his wife and children alive, the
poor man had to be ready for a visitor, and this visitor never received
a very hearty welcome. Once a year there arrived at his door an official
sent by the King of Persia. He was the tax-collector, sent to collect
the tribute which had to be paid yearly to their master, the great
sovereign at Shushan. Whatever else went unpaid, that tribute must be
paid; whatever other debts they incurred, that sum must be paid in full,
and paid at once.

Over-population, famine, tribute, it was no wonder that the people were
so poor.

But the great cry in the streets of Jerusalem was not merely a cry of
suffering and distress; it was an angry complaining cry; it was the cry
of those who felt that others were to blame for their sorrows.

As Nehemiah walks amongst the weeping crowds, and as he talks to the
people one by one, he finds that there are no less than three sets of
complainants.

(1) There are the utterly poor people, those who have no private means
whatever, but who are entirely dependent on the work of their hands and
on the wages they get for that work. These come to Nehemiah and pour out
their sorrowful tale. 'We,' they say, 'have large families, for

'We, our sons, and our daughters, are many.'

But 'Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them,' so runs the
Psalm, and are not childre