Nehemiah 6:3: the answer of a man who will not come down
3Therefore, I sent messengers to them, saying: “I am doing a great work, and I cannot descend, lest perhaps it may be neglected when I go out and descend to you.”
The refusal arrives with its reason attached. And the reason is not a full calendar: it is what coming down would cost the work already standing.
Short answer
Nehemiah 6:3 is the answer to an invitation to come down from the wall and meet opponents in the plain of Ono. Nehemiah does not argue the merits: he says he is doing a great work and cannot descend. The narrator has already told the reader the invitation was a trap.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
Few lines in the Bible have been turned into a productivity slogan as thoroughly as this one. The trouble is that the verse depends entirely on a piece of information sitting in the previous line, and the slogan throws it away: the men issuing the invitation meant harm to the man they were inviting.
Where this verse appears
The wall of Jerusalem was already up with no gaps left, though the gates had not yet been set in the entrances. Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem, who had been harassing the rebuilding, propose a meeting in one of the villages of the plain of Ono, well away from the city.
The text does not leave the motive open. It states plainly that they intended to do him harm. The same message came four times and received the same answer four times.
What it says
The answer has two parts. The first states what he is doing; the second, in the edition published here, gives the reason as a fear rather than a question — that the work might be neglected while he went down to them. Either way, the argument is about cost, not about preference.
What the verse is not: a rule for turning down invitations, nor spiritual permission to be unavailable. Nehemiah is right because the reader knows what the messengers wanted. Remove the ambush and the line stops teaching what people usually take from it — "great work" does not outrank "person" as a principle.
Notice also what he does not do. He does not denounce, accuse or argue. He answers at the lowest possible level of conflict and goes back to the wall.
What to do with it today
The verse is useful to anyone in the middle of something only they can finish who keeps being pulled off it. The honest use begins with a question: is the thing calling me down an ambush or a person? Nehemiah answers only the first case. For the second, Scripture has other verses, and they run in the opposite direction.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, give me the sense to tell an interruption from a trap. Keep me from dropping what you gave me to do, and keep me from using the work as an excuse to avoid people. Amen.