Nehemiah is interpreted in Latin as My consoler is the Lord or the consoler from the Lord. For when Nehemiah restored Jerusalem’s walls and, after delivering them from the disdain of their enemies, raised up the people of God to the observance of the divine law, it is surely clear that by his word and deed and person he not unsuitably designates the mediator of God and people, the man Christ Jesus,^[1] who indicates that he was sent to console the poor in spirit when he said to his disciples as he was about to ascend to heaven: I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete,^[2] that is, a Consoler, by whom the psalmist showed that God’s holy city (namely, the church) would be rebuilt and also those who mourn would be consoled when he said, The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted,^[3] and so on.

Nehemiah writes that he was in the fortress of Susa when the men came who brought the news about Jerusalem. Susa is the capital city of the kingdom of the Persians, as we read in the book of Esther.^[1] Not only Nehemiah but also the prophet Daniel calls it a fortress, not because the city itself is a fortress, for as we have stated it is a capital city and a very powerful one, but because it is so solidly built that it looks like a fortress.^[2] Now Susa means riding or returning. The name aptly befits the defenses of the mind of the faithful, especially of those who are charged with the capture of Jerusalem, that is, for the salvation of those who are occasionally snatched away from the church through the devil’s attacks but by repenting are brought back to the church again by the grace of God. For such people are in a returning fortress—that is, in the strength of a mind called back from the lowest delights to a longing for the heavenly homeland, from which they had fallen in their first parent; such people are in the very strong cavalry of the hearts of the saints who carry God as their rider, according to the prophet’s saying: Mounting your horses, and your riding is salvation.^[3] For the Lord indeed mounts his horses when he illuminates the hearts of preachers with the grace of his mercy so that he can rule them; and his riding is salvation because he not only carries to eternal salvation those over whom he presides by ruling them but also, so that he may likewise preside over them too, and through them makes others sharers of this same everlasting salvation as well.

The literal meaning is evident, namely, that those who had remained after the capture, even though they seemed to be living at peace in view of the fact that the king of the Persians had shown himself to be their friend and not long previously had sent to them Ezra the scribe with letters in order that he should have authority over all the region beyond the river,^[1] nonetheless were in great distress because their enemies were blaming them and because the holy city still remained in ruins.^[2] But even now in the holy church, people are rightly afflicted and pricked by a salutary sense of remorse when, even though they themselves have repented of their past wrongdoings, they consider the fact that their neighbors still are subject to sins, so that, through the negligence of those who, having reformed, could have been profitable to many, the devil has free entry into the church, as through the walls of a ruined city. It is even more lamentable if those very ones who should have been profiting others through their teaching and personal example show to observers an example of destruction in themselves by living corruptly. For this is what is meant by the fact that the gates of Jerusalem were burned down by enemy flames: that those who ought, by living and teaching well, to have been introducing worthy people into the assembly of the elect and keeping unworthy people out, perish instead in the fire of avarice, self-indulgence, pride, strife, envy, and the rest of the vices that the evil enemy is apt to bring in.

But I say, Has the Lord used iniquity to snatch the nations from the power of his enemies and recall them to faith in him and to his dominion? By no means. For Israel was once the Lord’s portion,^[1] but they made Israel turn from their God in sin, and because of their sins God said to them, Behold, you have been separated by your sins and because of your sins you have been scattered under the whole heaven. But again he says to them, If your dispersion should be from one end of heaven to the other, from there I will gather you, says the Lord. Because, therefore, the princes of this world^[2] had first invaded the Lord’s portion, the good shepherd^[3] had, necessarily, the ninety and nine having been left on the heights,^[4] to descend to the lands and seek the one sheep that was lost, and when it was found and carried back on his shoulders, to recall it to the sheepfold of perfection on high.