Ver. 1. And there was a great cry] Such as seditious ones use to set up in their outrageous uproars; or such as is the expression of great grief and anguish of heart. Of the people] The ignobile common people, a most dangerous and heady water, when once it is out. And of their wives] Who being pinched with penury, made piteous outcries. Invalidum omne, natura querulum. Significat clamorem vel querulum, vel imperiosum, iracundum, minacem (Seneca). Against their brethren the Jews] The richer sort, who oppressed them and drew them before the judgment seats, as St James hath it of the Jews of his time; for they were no changelings. Let the Philistines bind Samson, and he can bear it; but do not you lay hands on me, saith he to his countrymen. Scipio had rather Hannibal should eat his heart with salt than Laelius give him a cross word. Had it been mine enemy, saith David, I could have digested it. So could these poor creatures far better have borne the insolencies of strangers than the oppressions of fellow brethren. Tacitus tells us, that in his time the Jews were very merciful to those of their own nation, and cruel to all others, Misericordia in promptu apud suos, &c. But here their own complain, and this was doubtless a great grief to good Nehemiah.
Ver. 2. We, our sons, and our daughters are many] That is a mercy, had we but keeping for them. Their wives were very fruitful; sed luctuosa faecunditate (as Jerome saith of Laeta); for they had more mouths than meat for them. Tho young children asked for bread, and no man brake it unto them, Lamentations 4:4. Therefore we take up corn for them] Grain upon use, to keep us from starving; and that by pawning or selling our dear children to the rich creditors for servants; till we can redeem them, which we are never like to do, Nehemiah 5:5. That we may eat and live] Merely to keep us alive; for else we would never have made our poor children bondslaves. But Necessitas durum telum, hunger is so pinching a pain, that a woman will eat her own child, as in the siege of Jerusalem, Samaria, Saguntum; yea, a man his own flesh, rather than die with hunger. Hitherto the poorest sort. Follows now another cry.
Ver. 3. We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, &c.] Lands they had, but were little the better for them. Husbandry they had neglected to give attendance upon buildings; neither were they able to stock and store their grounds, and so are forced to part with them at an underrate price. This is many a poor man’s case among us, who yet are little pitied, or relieved, unless it be with a little mouth mercy, as in St James’s days, James 2:15,16. Oppressors will be but as friends at a sneeze; the most you can get of them is, God bless you; like they are (many of them) to Darius, who prayed God to help Daniel, but sent him to the lions’ den.
Ver. 4. There were also that said] Here was a third complaint to good Nehemiah; to whom whosoever lamented were sure to have redress and remedy, he did not serve these poor people as that merciless bishop of Mentz, in Germany, did; who, to rid his hands of them in a time of famine, in horreo conclusos iussit concremari, shut them up all together in a barn, and there burnt them (Hatto, Archiep. Mogunt. A. D. 923). He was afterwards eaten to death by rats, non sine maxima divinae vindictae suspicione, saith mine author, by a just hand of God upon him for his cruelty to those poor, whom he would not relieve with his grain, but let the rats eat it; and of whom he said, when they were burning in his barn, that they cried like a company of rats. We have borrowed money for the king’s tribute] They did not deny payment, and rise up in arms, making poverty their captain, as the Suffolk men did here in Henry VIII’s time. Neither did they answer the king of Persia’s officers, as the men of Andros once did Themistocles. He, being sent by the Athenians to them for tribute, told them that he came unto them on that errand, accompanied with two goddesses, Eloquence, to persuade, and Violence, to enforce them. Their answer was, that they also had on their side two goddesses as strong; Necessity, for they had it not, and Impossibility, for they knew not how to raise it (Plutarch). These men pawn their lands to pay tribute; but it went to their hearts, and caused this complaint.
Ver. 5. Yet our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren] i.e. Nevertheless we are men as well as they, though poor men, and therefore slighted (but why should they hide their eyes from their own flesh? Isaiah 58:7. “Have we not all one Father?” Malachi 2:10). Yea, we are men of Israel, such as fear God, Acts 13:16. Hewn out of the same rock, digged out of the same pit, Isaiah 51:1, cut out of the same cloth, the shears only going between. What if God have given them more wealth (as the shepherd bestows a bell upon his bellwether), should they therefore insult and domineer over us, as if not worthy to breathe in the same air? Our children as their children] viz. As dear to us, and as freeborn every way as theirs are; why then should their unmerciful dealing enslave them? He that oppresseth the poor, reproacheth his Maker; but he that honoureth him, hath mercy on the poor, Proverbs 15:31. There is a writ in England which beareth this name, Ne iniuste vexes, Vex not any man unjustly; but law without execution is like a bell without a clapper. It was done directly against law that is here complained of. See Leviticus 25:39, and therefore there is an Ecce Behold set upon it in the next words; And (lo) we bring into bondage, &c. These cruel cormorants thought to bear out and justify the most monstrous misdemeanor, because it was the fact of a noble, who could as easily break through the lattice of the laws as the bigger flies do through a spider web; as Anacharsis once said concerning his Scythians. We bring into bondage our sons and our daughters] This went to the hearts of them, and well it might. For, 1. Our children are a chief part of ourselves, even the seed; as though now there were nothing left in us but the chaff. 2. Bondage is very grievous, as liberty exceeding sweet. Did we but live a while in Turkey (saith one), in Persia., yea, or but in France, a dram of that liberty we yet enjoy would be as precious to us as a drop of cold water would have been to the rich man in hell, when he lay broiling in those flames. 3. They were necessitated to do this with their own hands, We bring into bondage, &c., hard hunger driving us thereunto, though as ill-willing thereunto as ever Jacob was to part with his Benjamin into Egypt; he would not do it till there was no remedy. 4. They sold them for slaves, not to strangers, but to their own friends and countrymen, where we looked for more courtesy. But a man had as good a deal with a Cossack or Cannibal as with a truly covetous captive, and as much favour and fair dealing he shall find. For such a one respecteth neither friend nor foe; nor regards at all how he cometh by it, by hook or by crook, by right or by wrong, be it short or long. And some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already] So that our complaints are neither false nor causeless; for that weaker sex is every way subject to more abuse, their chastity (which is their honour) was much hazarded, Castus, quasi, καστος ornatus. Neither is it in our power to redeem them] Would we never so fain. What would not a tender hearted father give or do for the redemption of his dear child? To let go many other examples, Fredericus Barbarossa, emperor of Germany (when as in the wars between the pope and himself, his youngest son was taken prisoner by the Venetian fleet), Vehementi amore commotus erga filium captum, saith mine author, through an earnest desire of getting his son’s liberty, he concluded a peace upon most unequal terms, viz. that he should come in person to Venice, and there, prostrate at the pope’s feet (who trod upon the emperor’s neck), he should beg pardon; and then having settled peace in Italy, led his army into Asia against the Turk. All this he did for his son’s liberty. For other men have our lands and vinevards] Even those men that so lately came out of captivity themselves, and know the misery of want and slavery. Those that partake now of so much liberty and liberality from the kings of Persia, and yet, behold, they pull up the bridge before us that themselves have gone over. Surely there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land, Hosea 4:1. Lo this was Vox oppressorum mercesque retenta laborum.