Nehemiah 4:23 - Exposition

My brethren . Actual brothers probably. That Nehemiah had brothers appears from Nehemiah 1:2 ; that one of them, Hanani, had accompanied him to Jerusalem is evident from Nehemiah 7:2 . My servants . See above, Nehemiah 7:16 . The men of the guard that followed me . As governor, Nehemiah would maintain a body-guard, in addition to his band of slaves. Saving that every one put them off for washing . So the Vulgate: " Unnsquisque tantum nudabatur ad baptismum ;" but it is at least doubtful whether the Hebrew words can possibly have this meaning. The most natural and literal sense of them is that given by Maurer and Rambach—"Each man's weapon was his water;" the supposed connection of the clause with the preceding being, "No one took off his clothes," not even for the bath—no one bathed; "a man's only bath was his weapon." Some critics, however, defend the rendering of the A. V.; others take the words in the same way, but explain the term "water" differently, of a natural want (Ewald, Stanley); while many regard the text as unsound, and propose emendations. None, however, that has as yet been proposed is satisfactory.