Remember Me, O My God
Everything regresses; Nehemiah returns; the book ends in prayer
Prepared for the Irvine chapter of the Google Christian Fellowship
The Chapter
Some years on, Nehemiah is back at the Persian court, and in his absence the covenant of chapter 10 quietly fails point by point. Eliashib the priest fits out a temple chamber for Tobiah—the old enemy now furnished inside the house of God. The Levites’ portions go unpaid and the singers scatter to their fields; the Sabbath fills with winepresses, grain heaps and Tyrian fish-sellers; children of mixed marriages can no longer speak the language of Judah. Nehemiah returns and reforms fiercely: Tobiah’s furniture thrown out, the tithe restored, the gates shut before the Sabbath, offenders confronted with startling violence. The book does not end in triumph but in a petition repeated to the last line: “Remember me, O my God, for good.”
“Remember me, O my God, for good.”Nehemiah 13:31
In the Hebrew
3“and they could not speak the language of Judah”
The verb is nākar in the causative — not “they did not know how” so much as they did not recognise the speech. Yəhûdît is Hebrew called by the name of the province, as on the Assyrian officer’s lips at the wall of Jerusalem two centuries earlier (2 Kgs 18:26). What alarms Nehemiah in the last chapter is not a broken wall but a lost vocabulary: half the children could no longer hear their own inheritance read aloud.
“and I cursed them, and struck some of them, and pulled out their hair”
Māraṭ means to make bare — it is used of polishing a sword (Ezek 21:9–11) and of the servant who gave his cheeks to those who plucked out the beard (Isa 50:6). The comparison commentators always make is Ezra, who faced the identical crisis and tore out his own hair (Ezra 9:3). Nehemiah tears out theirs. The Hebrew does not soften it, and the book offers no comment.
“remember me, O my God, for good”
Four times in this chapter: zākrāh-llî (vv. 14, 22, 31) and once inverted, zākrāh lāhem, remember it against them (v.29). To remember, in Hebrew, is not to recall but to act (Gen 8:1; Ex 2:24), and the lengthened imperative in -āh is the softened form, a plea rather than a demand. Scholars set these lines beside votive inscriptions in which a builder asks his god to remember his work. The book’s last word is ṭôbāh, good — the noun that ran through the memoir as “the good hand of my God upon me” (2:8, 18). Nothing is resolved. The final request is that a life be counted good.
Across the Scriptures
4Neh 13:11“Why is the house of God forsaken?”
- Neh 10:39 —
we will not forsake the house of our God
The signed clause, quoted back as a question. - Hag 1:4 —
Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?
The same question, asked in the same city, a lifetime earlier. - Mal 3:8 —
Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me
Written to this generation, about these unpaid tithes. - 1 Cor 3:16 —
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God
The house that can be neglected in a new way.
Neh 13:17“What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day?”
- Ex 20:8 —
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
The commandment, and the verb this chapter is built on. - Jer 17:21 —
bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem
Jeremiah names the gates by name; Nehemiah shuts them. - Isa 58:13 —
If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day
The rest described as delight rather than restriction. - Mk 2:27 —
The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath
Which does not settle the case, but changes what the argument is about.
Neh 13:25“I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair”
- Ezra 9:3 —
plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied
The identical crisis, and Ezra tears out his own. - Deut 7:3 —
Neither shalt thou make marriages with them
The law he is enforcing, without the method. - Jn 2:15 —
when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple
Reform with hands on is not unheard of; the comparison is left open. - 2 Tim 2:24 —
the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men
Placed here without a verdict. The two texts do not agree easily.
Neh 13:31“Remember me, O my God, for good”
- Neh 5:19 —
Think upon me, my God, for good
The same request, made about the opposite kind of chapter. - Ps 106:4 —
Remember me, O LORD, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people
The prayer of someone content to be counted with the crowd. - Heb 6:10 —
God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love
The nearest thing Scripture offers to an answer. - Lk 23:42 —
Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom
The last person in the Bible to ask it, and the only one told when.
Voices From the Traditions
6“Remember them in Thy heavenly kingdom, and remember me, thy sinful servant”Anaphora of the Apostles · Ethiopian Divine Liturgy, Anaphora of the Apostles §20 (trans. Daoud)
“Truly, I do not think I have even made a beginning yet.”Abba Sisoes (at the point of death) · Apophthegmata, Sisoes 14 (trans. Ward)
“And my whole hope is only in Your exceeding great mercy. Give what You command, and command what You will.”St. Augustine · Confessions X.29 (trans. Pilkington)
“The spiritual journey is not a career or a success story. It is a series of humiliations of the false self that become more and more profound.”Thomas Keating · The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation (Wit Lectures, Harvard Divinity School)
“Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”John Owen · Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, ch. II (Works vol. 6)
“It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest.”Eugene H. Peterson · A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, ch. 1, p. 16
From the Encyclical
3Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026), on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, takes Nehemiah as its governing image — set against Babel. The book ends with gates being shut. The encyclical ends with gates that cannot be.
“Its gates, which Nehemiah guarded so diligently, remain permanently open to all nations. God’s presence offers light and life to all.”Magnifica Humanitas ¶242
“In this era of digital transformation, I see in him a striking parable of our own vocation…men and women prepared to enter the construction sites of history…in order to rebuild what has collapsed and protect what is threatened.”Magnifica Humanitas ¶241
“We must, then, avoid the ‘Babel syndrome’…a uniformity that neutralizes differences.”Magnifica Humanitas ¶10
For Discussion
5- Every promise of chapter 10 is broken within a few years. Why do communal reforms decay—and what sustains conviction after the founding energy, or the founding leader, is gone?
- Nehemiah’s methods are fierce—confrontation, expulsion, even violence. Where is the line between zeal that protects something holy and zeal that damages people? How does the book leave that question open?
- In the Time of AI · Magnifica Humanitas ¶106Nehemiah returns to find every reform undone. The encyclical warns that invoking ethics in the abstract is not enough; oversight must not abdicate its responsibility. What keeps safeguards—in covenant or in code—from quietly eroding?
- Half the children could no longer speak the language of Judah—the last chapter’s alarm is not a broken wall but a lost vocabulary. What language is our own community losing, and who would notice?
- The book ends with four requests to be remembered, and its final word is ‘good.’ Leo XIV calls us to ‘rebuild what has collapsed and protect what is threatened’ (¶241), knowing reforms erode. What would it mean to work without expecting to see the result hold?