What happened to the Broad Wall?

Reputable modern translations typically render the Hebrew verb with some synonym of restored or fortified. The problem is that the Hebrew term Nehemiah uses here is the very common word everywhere else rendered as abandoned. That is a word we do not expect in a paragraph dealing with reconstruction; hence the urge to produce a term that adds to rebuilding. A further problem arises when we consider the implications of these perfumers restoring Jerusalem. We do not expect to meet the city’s name here; we sooner expect a reference to restoring the wall (or a piece of it). A third problem arises with the reference to the Broad Wall. This term does not appear anywhere else (other than Nehemiah 12:38), and so we have no idea what portion of the wall it refers to.

Perhaps the best way to understand the data is to note that over the centuries, kings of Judah had built additional walls to enclose more areas around the original city of Jerusalem as its population grew (2 Chronicles 32:5). The term broad can refer to the broadened area once enclosed by the newest wall. Since Nehemiah wants to complete the wall as quickly as possible, he needs to focus on the shortest feasible length, not the longer. Further, the population of Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s day was even too little to sustain the city within its shortest conceivable walls (Nehemiah 11:1). In this understanding, the verse means that Hananiah and his team rebuilt the wall to the point where it intersected with the broadened wall. Instead, though, of following the (foundations of the) broadened wall, the next builders kept building on the foundations of the original, smaller circumference of the city. The reconstruction project, then, was content with a less enclosed city than the fathers once had.