Build with a Trowel and a Sword

Come Follow Me 2026 — Week 30 — Jul 27–Aug 2 — Ezra 1; 3–7; Nehemiah 2; 4–6; 8

The Return from Babylon: Prophecy Fulfilled

The return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon is one of the most remarkable events in the Old Testament, not least because it had been prophesied in specific detail long before it happened. Isaiah had named Cyrus by name more than 150 years before Cyrus was born, calling him God’s shepherd who would say of Jerusalem, “She shall be built,” and of the temple, “Thy foundation shall be laid” (Isaiah 44:28). Jeremiah had specified the duration of the captivity: seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10).

When Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BC, he issued a decree in the first year of his reign that the Jewish people could return to their land and rebuild their temple. The book of Ezra opens with this decree and notes explicitly that it happened so that “the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled.” The narrator had no doubt: the geopolitical revolution that ended Babylonian supremacy and produced the Edict of Cyrus was the mechanism by which God kept His promise to a people He had not abandoned.

Ezra 1:1–2

“Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem.”

The naming of Cyrus in Isaiah is one of the most specific predictive prophecies in all of scripture — a pagan king named by name, his role described in detail, 150+ years before his birth. It was not the only such prophecy in Isaiah: the entire 40–55 section is saturated with prophecies of the return from Babylon, the servant who will bear the sins of many, the highway in the desert. The return from Babylon was not an accident of Persian imperial policy. It was the fulfillment of covenant promises maintained across seven centuries.

The Weeping at the Foundation

When the returning exiles laid the foundation of the second temple, the response was divided and poignant. The young people — who had never seen the first temple — shouted for joy. The old men — who had seen Solomon’s temple before its destruction — wept aloud. “So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off.”

This mingled sound — joy and grief together — is one of the most human moments in the entire Old Testament. The old men were not wrong to grieve. The memory of what had been lost was real. The new structure, they could see, would not match the glory of what had been destroyed. And yet the young were not wrong to shout. A foundation had been laid. The promise was being fulfilled. The return was real even if the restoration was incomplete.

God’s response to this scene came through the prophet Zechariah: “Who hath despised the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10). The smaller, humbler second temple was not an embarrassment — it was a beginning. God was not done. The full glory would come — but it would come through the process of obedient rebuilding, one foundation, one wall at a time, in the midst of opposition and grief and limited resources.

Ezra: When the Scriptures Are Read Publicly

Ezra the scribe arrived in Jerusalem with a second wave of returnees approximately eighty years after the first group under Zerubbabel. He was a priest and a scholar of the first order — “a ready scribe in the law of Moses.” His great contribution was not military or political but textual: he restored the law to a people who had largely forgotten it.

The scene in Nehemiah 8 is one of the most significant in the entire Old Testament. All the people gathered as one man in the open square before the Water Gate. They asked Ezra to bring the book of the law. He stood on a wooden platform and opened the book before all the people — men, women, and children old enough to understand — and read from morning to midday. The Levites walked through the crowd and explained the meaning of what was being read. “And all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.”

Nehemiah 8:8–9

“So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading. And Nehemiah… and Ezra the priest the scribe… said unto all the people, This day is holy unto the LORD your God; mourn not, nor weep. For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.”

The people wept. They had heard the law and understood, perhaps for the first time in their lives, what it said and what they had failed to keep. The appropriate response to encountering the word of God after a period of ignorance is grief for what was missed. But Ezra and Nehemiah redirected the grief: “This day is holy unto the LORD your God; mourn not, nor weep… the joy of the LORD is your strength.” Grief at past failure must give way to joy at present grace. The law had been recovered. The covenant could be renewed. Today was a new beginning.

This scene is the pattern of every genuine encounter with scripture. The word of God, read seriously, produces first conviction — an awareness of the gap between what God requires and what we have done. That conviction must be processed not as permanent shame but as the beginning of change. The joy of the LORD is strength precisely because it is the joy of those who have been forgiven, restored, and given a new starting point. Ezra’s public reading of the law was both a confrontation and an invitation.

Nehemiah: Prayer and Action Together

Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the Persian king Artaxerxes — a position of significant trust and influence in the royal court. When his brother Hanani returned from Jerusalem with news that the walls were broken down and the gates burned, Nehemiah wept, mourned, fasted, and prayed for days. His prayer drew on the covenant language of Deuteronomy, acknowledging Israel’s sin, claiming the promise of gathering, and asking for favor before the king.

When the king noticed his sadness and asked the reason, Nehemiah “prayed to the God of heaven” — a quick silent prayer right there in the throne room — and then answered the king. The combination of immediate prayer and immediate action is characteristic of Nehemiah throughout the book. He was not passive in his faith; he was a man of intense practical competence. But he prayed before he acted, during the act, and after it.

Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, surveyed the walls by night, and organized the entire community to rebuild — each family responsible for the section of wall nearest their own house. The opposition was immediate. Sanballat and Tobiah mocked: “What do these feeble Jews?” and “If a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall.” As the work progressed, the opposition escalated from mockery to threats of military attack.

Nehemiah 4:17–18

“They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon… and he that sounded the trumpet was by me.”

Nehemiah’s response to the military threat was both practical and theological: he set a watch, positioned men by families with swords, spears, and bows, and spoke to the people: “Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.” Then — with great practicality — half the workers built while the other half stood guard. They built with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other. They did not stop to fast and pray until God removed the opposition. They prayed, posted guards, and kept building.

Faith and Works Together

• James 2:17 — Faith without works is dead — Nehemiah embodied this principle
• 2 Nephi 25:23 — “We labor diligently… it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do”
• D&C 58:27 — “Men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause… not to be commanded in all things”

The Work Is Great and We Are Scattered

When the threat of attack became serious, Nehemiah stationed the people by families in the lower parts of the wall and gave them a rallying strategy: if the trumpet sounds, everyone comes together. But until then:

Nehemiah 4:19

“The work is great and large, and we are separated upon the wall, one far from another.”

This verse carries remarkable applicability to the church and to every community engaged in a great work. The work is always great. The workers are always scattered — each person responsible for their own section of the wall, each family building near their own house, each individual called to faithfulness in their own specific location. The work does not require everyone to be in the same place; it requires everyone to be faithful where they are.

Sanballat’s attempts at intimidation were varied and sophisticated. When mockery failed, he threatened military attack. When that failed, he tried to lure Nehemiah to a meeting outside Jerusalem. When that failed, he used a false prophet inside the community to frighten Nehemiah into hiding in the temple. Nehemiah’s answer to every approach was essentially the same: “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?”

The wall was completed in fifty-two days — a speed so remarkable that even Israel’s enemies recognized it: “They perceived that this work was wrought of our God.” Opposition to the work of God recognizes, even if it resists acknowledging, when God’s hand is present. The quality and speed of the work bore witness that more than human effort was involved.

The Joy of the LORD Is Your Strength

The convergence of Ezra’s public reading of the law and Nehemiah’s completed wall produced one of the great moments of covenant renewal in the Old Testament. The people gathered. The law was read. They wept. And then they were sent to feast and celebrate: “Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our LORD: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

The joy here is not the joy of those who have never suffered or failed. It is the joy of a people who returned from exile, who rebuilt from rubble, who heard the law for the first time in a generation and wept at the distance between what they had been and what God had called them to be — and who were told that God’s response to their honest grief was to call them to a feast. The strength that comes from this kind of joy is not the brittle confidence of those who have never been broken. It is the resilient, durable strength of those who have been broken and restored, who know both what they are without God and what they become when they return to Him.

Joy as Strength

• D&C 128:22 — Let the mountains shout for joy and the valleys echo — the joy of the restoration
• Philippians 4:4 — “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice.”
• 2 Nephi 2:25 — “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”
• Isaiah 52:7–8 — The watchmen on the walls shall sing together — the restored community witnesses God’s return

The Restoration Pattern

The return from Babylon, the work of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the covenant renewal that followed constitute one of scripture’s clearest prefigurations of the Restoration of the gospel. In both cases: a people had been scattered because of apostasy; a period of spiritual captivity had elapsed; God moved through unexpected human instruments (Cyrus, Joseph Smith) to initiate restoration; the scriptures were recovered and read publicly; the ordinances were reinstituted; opposition arose immediately; and the work continued through the combination of prayer and practical effort.

Nehemiah’s image of each family building near their own house is a perfect image of the covenant community that is renewed one household at a time. The wall of Jerusalem was not rebuilt by specialists doing the whole job; it was rebuilt by families, neighbors, priests, merchants, and goldsmiths — each one responsible for their own section. The great work of every restoration is local before it is global, personal before it is institutional, one section of wall at a time.

And the joy of the LORD — that specific, grounded, experienced joy of people who have returned from exile and rebuilt what was broken — is their strength. Not the strength of those who have never struggled. The strength of those who know that God keeps His promises across centuries, that the exile was not the end, that the rubble can be rebuilt, and that the day when the law is read publicly and the people weep and then feast is worth every day of carrying a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other.