You can tell a lot about a person when work’s to be done. Does he want a lighter load or a stronger back?
The little town of Tekoa, just 5 miles southeast of Bethlehem, sits at the base of a mountaintop fortress called the Herodion. The town was fortified in the days of Rehoboam, thus the meaning of its name, “stockade.” It’s renowned for two of its inhabitants, the wise woman used by Joab to get Absalom back into the palace (2 Sam 14:1-19), and the prophet “Amos, who was among the sheepbreeders of Tekoa” (Amos 1:1). But in Nehemiah 3, the men of Tekoa are the only ones mentioned twice. First, we read, “Next to them the Tekoites made repairs; but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of their Lord” (v 5). Those who should have been out in front thought manual labor beneath them. Nothing worse than lazy leaders! Noblesse oblige is a French expression meaning that true nobility should feel a societal responsibility to help those beneath them in the social order. Not these fellows. They were ignoble nobles! So what do you do when your leaders—whether government officials, civic representatives, church elders, husbands or parents—won’t do their part? To complain is to drain your energies even further. So what did the Tekoites do? It seems they responded, “If our nobles won’t help us in this onerous task of wall-building, then don’t expect us to do a whole section. I think instead that we should do TWO sections!” Thus we read, “After them the Tekoites repaired another section, next to the great projecting tower, and as far as the wall of Ophel” (v 27). Three cheers for every modern Tekoite who responds like this! As Edgar A. Guest wrote: “Life is strange with its twists and turns, As every one of us sometimes learns, And many failures turn about When we might have won had we stuck it out.”