Nehemiah was in a position to see the positive advantages of city life, and he regarded it as his business to make the most of them for the benefit of his fellow-countrymen. We have seen that each of the three great expeditions from Babylon up to Jerusalem had its separate and distinctive purpose. The aim of the first, under Zerubbabel and Jeshua, was the rebuilding of the temple; the object of the second, under Ezra, was the establishment of The Law; and the end of the third, under Nehemiah, was the fortification and strengthening of the city. This end was before the patriotic statesman's mind from the very first moment when he was startled and grieved at hearing the report of the ruinous condition of the walls of Jerusalem which his brother brought to him in the palace at Susa. We may be sure that with so practical a man it was more than a sentimental reverence for venerated sites that led Nehemiah to undertake the great work of fortifying the city of his fathers' sepulchres. He had something else in view than to construct a huge mausoleum. His aim had too much to do with the living present to resemble that of Rizpah guarding the corpses of her sons from the hovering vultures. Nehemiah believed in the future of Jerusalem, and therefore he would not permit her to remain a city of ruins, unguarded, and a prey to every chance comer. He saw that she had a great destiny yet to fulfil, and that she must be made strong if ever she was to accomplish it. It is to the credit of his keen discernment that he perceived this essential condition of the firm establishment of Israel as a distinctive people in the land of Palestine. Ezra was too literary, too abstract, too much of an idealist to see it, and therefore he struggled on with his teaching and exhorting till he was simply silenced by the unlooked-for logic of facts. Nehemiah perfectly comprehended this logic, and knew how to turn it to the advantage of his own cause.