Nehemiah 6:15

15. Elul The sixth month of the Jewish ecclesiastical year, corresponding nearly to our September. Fifty and two days back from the twenty-fifth of Elul would bring us to the third of the preceding month, Ab. The building of the wall was accordingly finished in the remarkably short time of less than two months. That this was possible, notwithstanding all the opposition of enemies, may be seen from the following considerations:

“There is little doubt that several parts of the old wall were entire; in many places the foundations still remained; there were all the materials of the old wall still at hand; and though they had to clear off and carry away much rubbish, yet they do not appear to have had any stones to quarry. The work mentioned here was little when compared to what Cesar did in Gaul and other places; and to what Titus did at Jerusalem, when he built a wall round that city of five thousand paces in three days, besides thirteen towers of ten stadia in circuit. And Quintus Curtius and Arrian inform us that Alexander the Great built the walls of Alexandria, which were nearly eight miles in compass, in the space of between twenty and thirty days.” Clarke.