His addressees lived in and around Jerusalem and so were very familiar with the mess the Babylonians had made of the wall. The stones their ancestors had so laboriously collected from afar and skillfully cemented together, one upon another, now lay scattered around the foundations. In the course of decades, weeds and shrubs and even trees will have grown through the rubble. In a word, the task was very daunting, particularly where the stones had rolled a fair way down the steep slopes. But Nehemiah summons them to the challenge.
17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.”