Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
There was no hire for man - Literally, "hire for man came not to pass." It was longed for, waited for and came not. So little was the produce, that neither laborer nor beast of burden were employed to gather it in.
Neither was there peace to him who went out or came in because of the affliction, better, of the adversary - In such an empire as the Persian, there was large scope for actual hostility among the petty nations subject to it, so that they did not threaten revolt against itself, or interfere with the payment of tribute, as in the Turkish Empire now, or in the weak government of Greece. At the rebuilding of the walls, after this time, the Samaritans, "Arabians, Ammonites, Ashdodites conspired to fight against Jerusalem," and to "slay them" Nehemiah 4:7-11. They are summed up here in the general title used here, "our adversaries" .
For I set - Literally, "and I set." Domestic confusions and strife were added to hostility from without. Nehemiah' s reformation was, in part, to stop the grinding usury in time of dearth or to lear the king' s taxes, through which men sold lands, vineyards, even their children Nehemiah 5:1-12.
( literally) let them loose, each against his neighbor - in that He left them to their own ways and did not withhold them.
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