The third was managed very differently. This time Nehemiah was attacked within the city, for it was now apparent that no attempts to lure him outside the walls could succeed. A curious characteristic of the new incident is that Nehemiah himself paid a visit to the man who was the treacherous instrument of his enemies' devices. He went in person to the house of Shemaiah the prophet--a most mysterious proceeding. We have no explanation of his reason for going. Had the prophet sent for Nehemiah? or is it possible that in the dread perplexity of the crisis, amid the snares that surrounded him, oppressed with the loneliness of his position of supreme responsibility, Nehemiah hungered for a Divine message from an inspired oracle? It is plain from this chapter that the common, every-day prophets--so much below the great messengers of Jehovah whose writings represent Hebrew prophecy to us to-day--had survived the captivity, and were still practising divination much after the manner of heathen soothsayers, as their fathers had done before them from the time when a young farmer's son was sent to Samuel to learn the whereabouts of a lost team of asses. If Nehemiah had resorted to the prophet of his own accord, his danger was indeed serious. In this case it would be the more to his credit that he did not permit himself to be duped.
Another feature of the strange incident is not very clear to us. Nehemiah tells us that the prophet was "shut up."[205] What does this mean? Was the man ceremonially unclean? or ill? or in custody under some accusation? None of these three explanations can be accepted, because Shemaiah proposed to proceed at once to the temple with Nehemiah, and thus confessed his seclusion to be voluntary. Can we give a metaphorical interpretation to the expression, and understand the prophet to be representing himself as under a Divine compulsion, the thought of which may give the more urgency to the advice he tenders to Nehemiah? In this case we should look for a more explicit statement, for the whole force of his message would depend upon the authority thus attributed to it. A simpler interpretation, to which the language of Shemaiah points, and one in accordance with all the wretched, scheming policy of the enemies of Nehemiah, is that the prophet pretended that he was himself in personal danger as a friend and supporter of the governor, and that therefore he found it necessary to keep himself in seclusion. Thus by his own attitude he would try to work on the fears of Nehemiah.