This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ... IT. %ht fraging patriot. 'Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven.'--Nehemiah ii. 4. We left Nehemiah in the attitude of prayer. The text also presents him as a suppliant, with this distinction, that while God is still invoked, it is rather a short and silent uplifting of the soul to Him, than an audible or prolonged pleading. The first chapter of the book before us records Nehemiah's appeal to God. This second chapter records his petitions to man. It opens, like the former, with an account of an interesting conversation, in which Nehemiah again takes part, but not 'Hanani and certain men of Judah.' It is a conversation between his royal master and himself. Some four months have passed away since the interview with Hanani was held. Winter has given place to spring; but, alas! no corresponding change, no gladsome springtime, has visited the heart of the king's cupbearer. Up to the present, however, he had deemed it prudent to conceal his grief from the king. Now, at length, the hour had come for manifesting it, and his troubled looks soon attract his master's attention. 'And it came to pass in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before him; and I took up the wine, and gave it unto the king. Now I had not been beforetime sad in his presence. Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart. Then I was very sore afraid. The word 'sad' might be rendered 'evil, ' and 'sorrow of heart' 'wickedness of heart'; hence some have supposed that the king, by the special notice he took of his cupbearer's demeanour, 'suspected him of entertaining some bad design, or that he was..