101 ‘EYES HEAR’ : NEHEMIAH 1,6 TO quickly answered by the king seeing the needs of his cupbearer in Neh 2,2. At first this seeing is not a positive one as it is breaking the social norms of behavior before the king. It is interesting to note the special inserted commentary by the author of Nehemiah to explain to the reader some of the socio-linguistic rules of what is acceptable to say and/or do, including the type of body language appropriate for someone in Nehemiah’s social position to display before the king. This serves to highlight the potential gravity and danger of the situation for Nehemiah. The seeing-chain of events continues. Nehemiah wanted God to see the situation in Jerusalem and do something positive. Now the king has seen Nehemiah in a potentially negative way. After a second quick intercessory prayer things begin to turn around. Nehemiah is granted favor in the king’s sight (Neh 2,6) and, even more, he is sent back with military protection and needed building supplies in order to supervise the rebuilding effort 38. Nehemiah must still see and hear further threats and challenges to the rebuilding project. But it soon becomes obvious to the reader that Nehemiah’s prayer was both seen and heard and that a new miracle of creation or bringing order from chaos has taken place with the rebuilding of the walls against all odds and within record time 39. * * * In this study we have looked beyond traditional exegetical tools, opting to use ritual studies and linguistic pragmatics in order to examine both the fine details, as well as the larger picture the of the strange statement in Neh 1,6 and provide new avenues of interpretation that could help the reader gain a better understanding of this verse. In the ritual studies section we examined the phrase within the context of the confessional prayer genre of the Hebrew Bible (Neh 1,5-11). We began by identifying and exploring the trigger or context for this ritual and then went on to understand the important ritual elements of time, space, action, and language embedded within the larger context of the phrase. We suggested that this penitentiary prayer is part of a ritual response to a crisis. Viewed as such it becomes clear that prayer in ancient Israel (as well as in Despite this Nehemiah is granted favor in the king’s sight in v.5 and he is 38 sent along with the needed material. Nehemiah then goes out to see for himself the destruction of the walls. The impossible task was undertaken and the wall completed in 52 days 39 (6,15).