Nehemiah 7:1
Now it came to pass, when the wall was built, and I had set up the doors, and the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed, Now it came to pass, when the wall was built, and I had set up the doors, and the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed,
The book of Nehemiah is supplemental to Ezra and is called the second book of Ezra, giving the history of the Jews during the restoration. Nehemiah, son of Hachaliah, was governor while Ezra held the position of priest, and Nehemiah had been cup-bearer to Artaxerxes Longimanus. Artaxerxes gave Nehemiah permission to return with a colony of Jews in 455 B.C.
The work was bitterly opposed by factions led by Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem, and the enemies were still active when the wall was finished. Yet God prospered the work of his hands, and Nehemiah continued diligent and zealous for God. Even the enemies perceived that the work was wrought of God. The wall was finished in fifty-two days from the time Nehemiah began, in B.C. 444.
The verse marks the time when the walls of Jerusalem were finished and the gates or doors were set up, and the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed, with proper officers and watches appointed. After the wall and gates were completed, the city was protected by keeping the gates shut until the sun was hot, setting guards at the gates and around the city, and assigning each person a watch over against or near his own house. These precautions were needed because, although the wall was finished, the city was large and great but the people were few inside, its population was small, and the houses were not yet built or rebuilt.
The building of the walls amid active enemies fulfilled Daniel's prophecy given nearly a hundred years before that the walls would be built even in troublous times. Before going further with building, God put it into Nehemiah's heart to gather the nobles and the rulers and the people to be reckoned by genealogy, and the number of the Jews was again recorded. The verse stands within Nehemiah's broader work of rebuilding the city wall, establishing the government, and carrying out needed reforms in the lives and worship of the people, especially in honoring the Sabbath, and it stands in the reading of Nehemiah 7 to 9 whose lesson is reading God's law attentively. The verse belongs to the history of the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and discoveries from ancient lands adjoining Israel that had dealings with Israel confirm its Bible narrative and give light on Babylonian life of that time.