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Nehemiah 3:1 (ANIV)
Eliashib the high priest and his fellow priests went to work and rebuilt the Sheep Gate. They dedicated it and set its doors in place, building as far as the Tower of the Hundred, which they dedicated, and as far as the Tower of Hananel.

DRAWING NOTES:

TIME OF DAY:
The text doesn’t specify a time of day, so I’ve set it at about mid morning.

LIGHTING NOTES:
Sunlight, coming from high above (East) illuminates the scene.

CHARACTERS PRESENT:
Eliashib the high priest is the man in yellow robes in the left foreground.
Various other Hebrew men and women, working on restoring the wall and Sheep gate.

RESEARCH/ADDITIONAL NOTES:
The Sheep Gate is the first one usually mentioned in a round up of the various gates of Jerusalem.

The modern walls of Jerusalem are of cut stone, but in Neremiah’s day I suspect the stones used to build the walls would have been rougher.

Eliashib was the high priest at the time of Nehemiah’s wall rebuilding project. Eliashib means “whom God restored”, which is quite an apt name, since the walls of Jerusalem were being restored at the time he was high priest! Incidentally, there are 6 Hebrew men named Eliashib mentioned in the Bible.

Here’s the scene without the figures or sheep, but including the scaffolding.

Background of Nehemiah 03 – Rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls – Scene 01 – Eliashib rebuilds the Sheep gate (with wooden scaffolding)

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Background of Nehemiah 03 – Rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls – Scene 01 – Eliashib rebuilds the Sheep gate (with wooden scaffolding)

Here’s the scene without the figures, sheep or scaffolding, to show the broken walls of the Sheep gate more clearly.

Background of Nehemiah 03 – Rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls – Scene 01 – Eliashib rebuilds the Sheep gate (without wooden scaffolding)

Click on the colour bar below to view/buy this Background:
Background of Nehemiah 03 – Rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls – Scene 01 – Eliashib rebuilds the Sheep gate (without wooden scaffolding)

Notice the burned timbers in the partial gate archway – all that remains of the original gates, burned by the Babylonians 70 years earlier.

Map of the walls and gates of Jerusalem at the time of Nehemiah
The blue dot & arrow on the map shows the position of the viewer & their direction of view in Scene 01 above.

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Map of the Walls and Gates of Jerusalem at the time of Nehemiah

Greyscale scene, which helps me to establish light and shade in the finished work.

Nehemiah 03 – Rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls – Scene 01 – Eliashib rebuilds the Sheep gate – Background – Greyscale