NehemiahEvery story needs someone to push against, and the book of Nehemiah has three. They appear together the moment the rebuilding is announced: “Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite servant, and Geshem the Arabian” (Nehemiah 2:19). From then on, they try almost everything to stop the wall.
Sanballat the Horonite
Sanballat is the leader of the opposition and the one named most often. “Horonite” most likely means he came from Beth-horon, a town northwest of Jerusalem. He was grieved from the start that someone had come “to seek the welfare of the children of Israel” (Nehemiah 2:10).
When the building began, he spoke before “his brothers and the army of Samaria” and mocked the work: “What are these feeble Jews doing? … Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, since they are burned?” (Nehemiah 4:2). That audience says something about his position. He had standing in Samaria, the region to the north.
History outside the Bible fills this in. Letters written in Aramaic by the Jewish community at Elephantine in Egypt, dated to the late 5th century BCE, mention “Sanballat, governor of Samaria” and his sons Delaiah and Shelemiah. So the man in Nehemiah was not a local troublemaker, but a Persian-appointed official next door.
His influence reached right into the temple. Near the end of the book, a grandson of the high priest Eliashib turns out to be Sanballat's son-in-law, and Nehemiah chases him away (Nehemiah 13:28).
Tobiah the Ammonite
Tobiah is called “the Ammonite servant” (Nehemiah 2:10). “Servant” may be an official title, a servant of the king, rather than an insult. He stood beside Sanballat when the mocking began and added the most famous line of the book: “What they are building, if a fox climbed up it, he would break down their stone wall” (Nehemiah 4:3).
What made Tobiah dangerous was his connections inside Judah. He was the son-in-law of Shecaniah, his son had married the daughter of Meshullam, one of the wall builders, and many nobles of Judah were “sworn to him”. Letters went back and forth between Tobiah and the nobles, and they reported Nehemiah's words to him (Nehemiah 6:17-19).
Years later, while Nehemiah was away, the priest Eliashib gave Tobiah a large storeroom in the temple courtyard, the room meant for the offerings. When Nehemiah came back, he threw all of Tobiah's household goods out of the room and had it cleansed (Nehemiah 13:4-9).
Outside the Bible, a powerful family called the Tobiads is known from the region of Ammon, east of the Jordan, in later centuries. Many historians connect them to this Tobiah, though the link is not certain.
Geshem the Arab
Geshem, also spelled Gashmu (Nehemiah 6:6), is the least described of the three, but he joins in at every key moment: the first ridicule (Nehemiah 2:19), the invitation to Ono (Nehemiah 6:1-2) and the rumor that Nehemiah planned to make himself king, which the letter says “Gashmu says” (Nehemiah 6:6).
A silver bowl found at Tell el-Maskhuta in Egypt carries an inscription naming “Qaynu son of Geshem, king of Qedar”. Qedar was a powerful Arab kingdom controlling trade routes to the south and east of Judah. If this is the same Geshem, as many scholars think, he ruled far more territory than either of his partners.
What they tried
The opposition grew as the wall grew. In order:
- Ridicule. “Will you rebel against the king?” (Nehemiah 2:19), then the mocking in front of the army of Samaria (Nehemiah 4:1-3).
- A planned attack. When the wall reached half its height, they conspired with the Arabians, Ammonites and Ashdodites to fight against Jerusalem and cause confusion (Nehemiah 4:7-8). They meant it to be a surprise: “They will not know or see, until we come in among them and kill them” (Nehemiah 4:11).
- The invitation to Ono. Four times Sanballat and Geshem asked Nehemiah to meet them in the plain of Ono, “but they intended to harm me”. His answer: “I am doing a great work, so that I can't come down” (Nehemiah 6:2-4).
- An open letter. The fifth message came unsealed, accusing Nehemiah of planning a revolt and threatening to report it to the king (Nehemiah 6:5-7).
- A hired prophet. Tobiah and Sanballat hired Shemaiah to warn Nehemiah that killers were coming and he should hide inside the temple. Nehemiah saw that God had not sent him, and refused to go (Nehemiah 6:10-13).
None of it worked. The wall was finished in 52 days, and when the enemies heard, “they lost their confidence; for they perceived that this work was done by our God” (Nehemiah 6:15-16). For how the builders kept working under that pressure, see why they worked with a sword in one hand.
Why did they care so much?
A walled Jerusalem changed the balance of power. Sanballat governed Samaria to the north, Tobiah had standing to the east and friends inside Judah, and Geshem's people controlled the south. A weak, open Jerusalem was easy to influence. A strong one, with its own governor sent by the Persian king, was not. Their accusation of rebellion (Nehemiah 2:19; 6:6-7) was an attempt to turn the king against the project he had approved.
Sanballat's raiders in the game
In Nehemiah, the three appear in the story between sections, and their raiders attack the wall every day. Scouts come first, brutes join on day 9 and raiders on day 21. At the East Gate, messengers arrive to call your builders down to Ono. As in the account, the right answer is to stay on the wall.