white tunics turned up, are leading, as it was right they should, the
van of Nehemiah's effort.

Heading these priests, and superintending their work, is Eliashib the
high priest. The meaning of his name is _God restores_, a grand name
for the man who began the restoration of the Holy City. This Eliashib was
the grandson of the high priest Jeshua, who had returned with
Zerubbabel. He is honourably mentioned by Nehemiah as leading the way in
this work; but, sad to say, though he earnestly built the wall round
the city, Eliashib was afterward the one who let sin come within those
very walls.

The priests are building from the Sheep Gate as far as the two towers,
Meah and Hananeel, which stood at the north-east corner of the city.

We pass on, and next we see a number of men building; we notice at once,
by their dress, that they are not priests, so we ask them where they
come from. We find they are men of Jericho, the city of palm trees,
fourteen miles away in the Jordan valley. They are the descendants of
the 345 men of Jericho who returned with the first detachment of Jews in
the time of Cyrus. This piece of the wall has been allotted to them
because it faces their own city Jericho; they are building at the very
spot from which the road started that led from Jerusalem to Jericho.

Passing the Jericho men we come to a bit of the wall where one solitary
man is working. His name is Zaccur. He can only have a small piece of
the wall allotted to him, for we are close now upon the Fish Gate, where
other builders are at work, the sons of Hassenaah. Possibly this Zaccur
was a man of no importance, for we never hear of him again; probably his
share of the work was only a small one, yet it was well and faithfully