Apparently a famine hit the area and I’m sure it was only exacerbated by the fact that the men were splitting time between the wall building and their regular jobs. That’s probably why you see the women complaining in this chapter. It was also difficult because the nobles weren’t following the guidelines set out in Deuteronomy for charging interest to other Jews, especially in times of poverty. God didn’t want Jews driving their own people further into poverty by demanding interest when they were in need. I love that Nehemiah gets angry about this, because I think it parallels our current day. We need a louder outcry in the church today, because there are Christians struggling all over the world while many wealthy Christians live extremely comfortably, oblivious or apathetic to their struggle. The way Christians took care of each other in the early church was one of the defining characteristics of the church even to outsiders. I remember a quote from the Emperor Julian who couldn’t stop the growth of Christianity (or atheism as he called it because it denied the gods) in the Roman Empire.
Atheism has been specifically advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.
God set it up in such a way that the world would see how we lived and see that it is better than how they were living.
The nobles responded positively to Nehemiah’s condemnation which seems very contrary to how we respond today. We are scared to call out our brothers today because we don’t want to come across as judgmental or, more often, because we know that that person will probably respond negatively (if not hostile) towards us. It could help in this situation that Nehemiah includes himself as one who needs to change.