The redemptive-historical moment of the present passage is significant. Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord had foretold (some 150 years ago) that the city shall be rebuilt for the Lord from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate
(Jeremiah 31:38). The Tower of Hananel and the Corner Gate are obvious references to the wall. This reconstruction would happen as evidence that the Lord had not rejected his people despite their rebellious conduct over the years (Jeremiah 31:37). The reason behind this display of God’s mercy was his own promise first announced in Paradise and later repeated through the Law and the Prophets that he would preserve his people with a view to the coming of Jesus Christ in the fullness of time. That Nehemiah and the people may commence the reconstruction of the wall speaks to God’s faithfulness to his commitment to move history forward to the coming of the Saviour. In Christ, God came to dwell with his own as he had previously lived among his people in the temple of Jerusalem (John 1:14).
As all of man’s work in this broken life, the wall that Nehemiah could repair was inevitably doomed to collapse again (Matthew 24:2). What was needed was a better Builder and better stones. Christ Jesus is the better Mason. He builds his church from people comparable to living stones
(1 Peter 2:5; Ephesians 2:20–21). The walls and gates of his New Jerusalem are indestructible (Revelation 21:12) even to the ravages of sin and the attacks of the devil, for Christ Jesus has atoned for sin and defeated the evil one. The finite work Nehemiah may begin, then, both foreshadows Christ’s better future work as well as calls out for that better work to occur.
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.”