Now it came to pass, when the wall was built, and I had set up the doors, and the porters and the singers and the Levites were appointed,
Ver. 1. When the wall was built] For better defence of the city. Moenia a munienda urbo dicuntur.
And I had set up the doors] We may not take this expression for a vain glorious haec ego feci, I have made this, such as was that of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel 4:30, boasting as if he (and not Ninus) had built Babel, when he enlarged it only, and built the palace; or that of Augustus, Urbem ego lateritiam inveni, marmoream reliqui. I found the city of clay but I left it of marble. We read of one Lampadius, a nobleman in Rome, who per omnia civitatis membra, through all parts of the city, where other great men had bestowed cost in building, he would set up his own name (not as a repairer of the work either, but) as the chief builder. Trajan the emperor also is said to have been sick of this disease; and was therefore called by way of jeer, Wallweed, Herba parietina. But good Nehemiah was none such; he was humiliter sublimis, et sublimiter humilis, as Cyprian phraseth it; that is, humbly lofty, and loftily humble; humble in heart, and yet high in worth and works, as Nazianzen saith of Athanasius, υψηλος τοις εργοις, ταπεινος δε τω φρονηματι .
And the Levites were appointed] viz. To their several services in the temple (as David had distributed them), after that they had been otherwise employed about the building.