Nehemiah 1:3

The province] Judæa was now a province of the Persian empire (Ezra 5:8). The wall.. broken down] This is most naturally explained by the supposition that some recent attempt had been made to fortify Jerusalem, which had been forcibly stopped; and such an attempt seems described in Ezra 4:7. But some authorities suppose the allusion to be to the destruction of the walls by the Babylonians in 586, some 140 years before.