Nehemiah 2:3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Let the king live for ever My sadness comes not from any disaffection to the king, for whom my hearty prayers are that he may live for ever, but from another cause. Why should I not be sad, when the place of my fathers' sepulchres lieth waste? Which by all nations are esteemed sacred and inviolable. He says not a word for the temple, as he spake before a heathen king, who cared for none of these things. There is a regard due to one's own country, which ought not to be extinguished by the pleasure or plenty of any other. It is not a weakness to be deeply affected with the distresses, or for the death of our friends and relations, at what distance secret we are from them; nor can any prosperity in another country excuse a man for not being so much afflicted for any calamity that befalls his own as not to entertain mirth and jollity in his heart. Nehemiah was in no mean station when he was cup-bearer to Artaxerxes, and we may very reasonably suppose, from the grace and bounty which that great king showed him, that he might have had any honour or preferment he would have requested in that great and flourishing empire; yet when that great king discerned that there was sorrow of heart in his countenance, and demanded the reason of it, he made no other excuse but, Jerusalem lay waste: and when the king so graciously invited him to ask some favour worthy of his royal bounty, he would require nothing else but permission and power to go and relieve his country. The grievances of the church, but especially its desolations, ought to be a grief to all good people, and will to all that have a concern for God's honour, and are of a public spirit.