Did not your fathers thus? He bids them reflect, and consider that this was one of the crimes of which their fathers were guilty; and for which God had suffered them to be carried captive out of their land, and their city to be destroyed. Did not God bring all this evil upon us? Which you so well and sadly remember, that I need not tell you the particulars. When the gates began to be dark Which was about sun- setting, by reason of the mountains which were round about and near Jerusalem: at which time they who sat at the gates could no longer see to do any thing. I commanded that the gates should be shut In order that none who came to sell goods might enter in, and that no burden might be brought in on the sabbath day, or late in the evening before it, or early in the morning after. And some of my servants set I at the gates Out of a diffidence in those to whom the keeping of the gates had been committed.
Related Commentaries of Nehemiah 13:18
Nehemiah 13:18-19
18 Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath.
19 And it came to pass, that when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the sabbath, I commanded that the gates should be shut, and charged that they should not be opened till after the sabbath: and some of my servants set I at the gates, that there should no burden be brought in on the sabbath day.