Nehemiah
This entry incorporates text from Easton's Bible Dictionary, 1897, with some modernization.
Nehemiah or Nechemya (נחמיה "Comforted of/is the LORD", Standard Hebrew Nəḥemya, Tiberian Hebrew Nəḥemyāh) was a person in the Bible, believed to be the primary author of the book of Nehemiah. He was the son of tribe of Judah. His family must have lived in Jerusalem (Neh. 2:3).
He lived in the time when Judah was a province of the Persian Empire (see also History of ancient Israel and Judah). In his youth he was appointed to the important office of royal cup-bearer at the palace of Shushan. The king, Artaxerxes I (Artaxerxes Longimanus), seems to have been on terms of friendly familiarity with his attendant.
Through his brother 446 BC (eleven years after Ezra), with a strong escort supplied by the king, and with letters to all the pashas of the provinces through which he had to pass, as also to Shushan or Ecbatana. Very soon after this the old corrupt state of things returned.
Malachi now appeared among the people with words of stern reproof and solemn warning; and Nehemiah again returned from Persia (after an absence of some two years), and was grieved to see the widespread moral degeneracy that had taken place during his absence. He set himself with vigour to rectify the flagrant abuses that had sprung up, and restored the orderly administration of public worship and the outward observance of the law of Moses.
Of his subsequent history we know nothing. Probably he remained at his post as governor till his death (about 413 BC) in a good old age. The place of his death and burial is, however, unknown.
Nehemiah was the last of the governors sent from the Persian court. Judea after this was annexed to the satrapy of Coele-Syria, and was governed by the high priest under the jurisdiction of the governor of Syria, and the internal government of the country became more and more a hierarchy.
