The people desired to construct the city wall but were being hindered from the holy work by the severity of the famine. This famine had been caused not only by a scarcity of crops but also by the greed of the rulers, since they were demanding greater taxes from these people than they were able to pay. We see that this occurs among us in the same manner every day. For how many are there among God’s people who willingly desire to obey the divine commands but are hindered from being able to fulfill what they desire not only by lack of temporal means and by poverty but also by the examples of those who seem to be endowed with the garb of religion but who exact an immense tax and weight of worldly goods from those whom they claim to be in charge of while giving nothing for their eternal salvation, either by teaching them or by providing them with examples of good living or by devoting effort to works of piety for them? Would that some Nehemiah (i.e., a consoler from the Lord) might come in our own days and restrain our errors, kindle our breasts to love of the divine and strengthen our hands by turning them away from our own pleasures to establishing Christ’s city!

But we should observe according to the literal meaning that the unhappy outcry of the afflicted people was attended by a threefold distinction. For some, compelled by the famine, were proposing to sell their own children to the more wealthy for food; others, sparing their children, wished rather to give up their fields and own homes for food; and some, by contrast, prohibiting the sale of both children and fields, were urging that they should merely borrow money for the king’s taxes, giving their fields and vineyards as a pledge until a fruitful supply of crops returned and they could restore the moneylenders what they had borrowed.

As the most excellent leader of the heavenly militia and wise architect^[1] of God’s city, he first of all declared that he himself had done what he wished the nobles and magistrates of the people to do, namely, to give alms to the poor and seek nothing from them except faithfulness to God’s law and the building of his city. In this passage, we do not need to scrutinize the allegorical meaning but to observe the literal meaning of the text itself by performing it as diligently as we can, namely, so that quite apart from the daily fruits of almsgiving, we should take care whenever a general time of famine and destitution has afflicted the people, not only to give poor people what we can but also to forgive that tribute that we have been accustomed to exact from our subjects as though by right, in order that the Father might forgive us our debts too.^[2]

For [if one] either refuses to show mercy on poor people or is not ashamed to demand from them, as if lawfully, what they do not have to give, this person is shaken from his house (namely, is cast and shaken out from the fellowship of the holy church in which he believed he would remain forever) and deprived of his labors, doubtless, that is, of the fruit of good works in which he believed that he had toiled admirably. For labors performed without piety cannot become fruitful before the Lord.

When on hearing his declaration they all responded Amen and, praising God, did what Nehemiah had commanded, it is surely evident that they had not been forced by fear but had received his words in the inmost affection of their heart.

Explaining this by means of a type, the apostle says that the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. But I have not used any of these things.^[1] For twelve years, Nehemiah and his brothers so lived under his leadership that they would not eat the yearly provisions that were due to the governors, so that by this he might mystically suggest that that work is an apostolic one when someone who has been promoted to be a ruler of God’s people nobly undertakes the work of the ruler by building the church but does not seek a reward for his work by asking for earthly goods from those whom he rules by preaching and living well.