When we give ourselves over to the work of God, we place ourselves in the path of folks who have contempt for God and his work, and will spare no effort to ridicule those who number themselves with him. Paul puts it: “All who will live godly… will suffer persecution!” (2Timothy 3:12). In the New Covenant text, it is all who will live godly in Christ Jesus… However, the context is all who will live godly in as much as he understands truth. In our present context, Nehemiah knew the Lord had commanded Cyrus to release the Jews in Babylon and go to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and the Temple (Ezra 1:1-2; 5:3; cp. Isaiah 44:28; 45:1, 4, 13). Therefore, it was not necessarily so, when folks who do the will of God are mocked and scorned, that they are the primary targets for the persecution, but, rather, it is God who commanded the righteous work to be done in the first place, who is blasphemed and held in contempt by those who stand in a state of rebellion against him.
It seems that only the king’s satrap knew of Nehemiah’s mission to rebuild Jerusalem and the House of God there. Sanballat, who appears to be one the king’s governors and placed in authority over the province of Samaria, was informed by the satrap that Sanballat would no longer have authority over Judah and Jerusalem, because Nehemiah was to become the new governor there. It wasn’t until Nehemiah’s project of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem was well underway, that Sanballat understood the implications of his mission. A walled and unfriendly Jerusalem wouldn’t be an acceptable situation for him and his interests in exploiting the Jews in the province of Judah. Therefore, he was in a state of rage and came upon Jerusalem to observe firsthand what was going on, and he had taken his army with him. At first, he hoped to intimidate the Jews, which no doubt had worked in the past. He knew he had no legal right to stop the building project, if Nehemiah was the newly appointed governor of Judah. Therefore, he did what he could; he mocked the Jews and ridiculed their efforts to rebuild the wall around their city (Nehemiah 4:1-2).
Tobiah, the Ammonite, called the servant in Nehemiah 2:19, was probably so called, because he had been in the king’s court prior to his being appointed to his present position of authority. Tobiah seems to have been allied with Sanballat in some manner, and he came with him to intimidate and ridicule the Jews, who were taking part in the building project at Jerusalem (Nehemiah 4:3).
When Nehemiah discovered what had taken place, he prayed to the Lord, telling him of how their enemies had despised the Jews for their obedience to him (Nehemiah 4:4). He also asked the Lord to intervene between the Jews and their enemies, and frustrate the plans of Sanballat and his allies, and make them to be a prey to the Jews. Some scholars seem to want to apologize for Nehemiah’s prayer that asks God not to forgive Sanballat and his allies (Nehemiah 4:5), but why should the Lord forgive his enemies who persecute his children? When Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified him, he said they didn’t know what they were doing. However, when it became apparent that God raised Jesus from the dead, they were no longer in ignorance, and the Lord no longer forgave them for persecuting his children who followed Jesus. Instead, he kept their deeds in mind and punished them by destroying Jerusalem and their Temple in AD 70, which ended his covenant with them. When the Lord is blasphemed, and when his enemies knowingly stand against him (cp. Matthew 28:11-13), those folks are to be punished, not forgiven.
Nevertheless, Sanballat’s intimidation and ridicule of the workers had little effect, because the workers had a mind to obey the Lord and keep on building the wall, which by this time, its breaches were being closed and that part of the building project was nearly finished (Nehemiah 4:6). Some translations have the wall joined together to half its height, but the word height is an insert or interpretation of the text. The fact is that the very next verse denies such an interpretation. There, the text says the breaches in the wall **began** to be closed (verse-7)! How could the wall be built up to half its height, if the breaches or openings in the wall weren’t yet closed? The idea is ridiculous and obviously in error.
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