Bible Commentary - Nehemiah 6

In this chapter, Sanballat and his allies resume their threats and deception against Nehemiah and the other Jews.

This chapter feels like a continuation of chapter 4.  It does not repeat the same material, but it continues along the same lines, with Sanballat and his friends spewing threats and rumors in a continued effort to disrupt the construction of the wall.  We learn from verse 1 that the wall was built, but that the gates and doors had not yet been placed in it, so the wall is still incomplete.  Depending on how you count, there are three or four distinct attacks in this chapter, so just like in chapter 4 I will go through the attacks and Nehemiah’s responses.

The first attack is distraction.  Sanballat and Geshem invite Nehemiah to go down to Ono to meet together.  As an aside, I’ve heard more than one speaker now say “if someone is inviting you to “oh no”, you should always decline” or variants of that.  Anyway, to modern readers this language of “let’s meet together” sounds very peaceful and friendly, but I would like to point out that in the bible this phrase is also sometimes used for “meeting in battle” (one example is 2 Samuel 2:13).  While I think a peaceful interpretation may be supported, I also think that this invitation hints at a challenge for Nehemiah to come down and fight it out with Sanballat and his supporters.

Either way, it is clear that Nehemiah going down to meet with Sanballat (whether to talk or to fight) does not serve towards Nehemiah’s purpose in building the wall.  Nehemiah’s response to these attempts at distraction is focus.  He focuses on his vision, which is to finish the wall, and his response shows this.  He says, “I am doing a great work”, why should I disrupt the work just to meet with you (v. 3).  To me, meeting with Sanballat feels like an attempt to placate one’s ego.  Sanballat is an influential but distant man who has been eminating threats against Nehemiah, but without any concrete action.  Sanballat is a man filled with talk and little action (driven by circumstance I am sure, it’s unlikely Sanballat was in a position to act against Nehemiah).  In contrast, Nehemiah sometimes speaks but his focus is on action: building the wall and rallying other men to build the wall.

In this instance, Sanballat is attempting to reduce Nehemiah to his level.  Why else would Sanballat ask Nehemiah to go out and meet him, rather than Sanballat himself coming up to Jerusalem to meet Nehemiah?  Sanballat is in the middle of Oh No, spending all his time trying to tear down Nehemiah.  Nehemiah is in Jerusalem fulfilling his vision.  If Nehemiah went out to Ono, he would become like Sanballat, doing nothing, accomplishing nothing, and in that way he would cease to be a threat to Sanballat.

Sanballat represents the status quo.  Change is threatening to Sanballat because Sanballat is dominant in the current world system.  Everyone who is trying to change the world will always face a Sanballat in their life because there’s always at least one person who wants to keep the world exactly the way it is, regardless of how messed up that might be.  By going out to meet Sanballat, we become like him because at that point, we have thrown away our vision which is the only thing separating us from Sanballat in the first place.

Nehemiah refuses Sanballat’s invitation all four times, and passes the first test.

The second attack is when Sanballat again threatens Nehemiah, this time implying that Nehemiah was trying to make himself king, which would have been a direct act against their Persian authorities.  Interestingly, the conclusion of Sanballat’s statement is the same as his first attack, which is to come and meet with him (v. 7).

This is basically attempted blackmail.  The opened letter is intended to show that somebody was “reporting” Nehemiah to the Persians for his supposed treachery.  Sanballat is basically saying, “here is this letter I found that says you’re going to betray the Persians, and I heard that somebody is going to report you to the king for it, so how about coming to meet me now?”  Previously Sanballat was asking “nicely” for Nehemiah to come meet him, now he is trying to more or less extort Nehemiah into doing it under the threat of falsely reporting him to the Persian king.

In this case, Nehemiah responds to Sanballat, basically just denying the allegation and remaining in Jerusalem to continue building the wall.  Nehemiah is effectively daring Sanballat to report him to the king and trusting in his superior relationship with the king to get him through whatever crisis follows.  Remember that Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king, which is a highly trusted and influential role.  In the end, it appears that Sanballat did not follow through with his threat because we never hear about this letter again.  If Sanballat had reported Nehemiah to the king and the king found the allegation false, it is possible that Sanballat himself would have been punished for lying, so I would guess that actually following through would have carried a risk for Sanballat as well.  Otherwise we would have expected Sanballat to report Nehemiah to the king.

The third attack is via Shemaiah, a Jewish man and secret ally of Sanballat.  This follows on the same kind of threats as before, warning Nehemiah that men were coming to kill him and he should go hide in the temple.  This again sounds innocent to us, how could going to the temple be a bad thing?  Besides distracting Nehemiah from the work, this would have also looked suspicious to the Persians because the temple is kind of like a fortress and it’s also where Jewish kings were crowned in the past.  For instance, remember the story of Joash in 2 Kings 11 when he was anointed by the high priest and overthrew Athaliah from the temple.  2 Kings 11:14 specifically says that the king was “standing by the pillar, according to the custom”.  So apparently it was customary for kings to be anointed as king next to a particular pillar in the temple, and this may have been foreshadowed if Nehemiah fled to the temple.

Nehemiah again refuses.  He basically says, even if my life is in danger it is not right for me to flee before the enemy.  It is a different kind of distraction, but with the same end result: if Nehemiah had fled, the work would have been disrupted.  Think about it this way: if Nehemiah flees from the wall, then how can any of his men remain?  Nehemiah is the first person threatened but if he left, the threats would fall on whoever remained, because Sanballat would not stop until the work was either finished or destroyed.  Nehemiah is actually sheltering his men from these threats because so long as he remains the leader of this effort, all of Sanballats attacks will be directed against him.

In the end it all proves to be a vapor.  Sanballat continues issuing threats and rumors and insinuation, and Nehemiah may very well be afraid, but he cuts through it by staying focused on his vision and refusing to be distracted, even by fear for his own life.

Lastly, this chapter concludes with a description of “many letters” (v. 17) passing between Tobiah (an ally of Sanballat) and the leaders of Judah.  We learn specifically that many of the leaders of Judah had intermarried their families with these Samaritans.  In my opinion, this is like a practical demonstration of why God commanded the Jews to not intermarry with foreigners, because Tobiah uses all of his influence and leverage with the leaders of Judah to undermine Nehemiah and Jewish interests.  The leaders of Judah may have thought that they were strengthening themselves and their people, but here we can see it was doing the exact opposite, compromising the nation’s leadership by giving influence to the enemy.  In the book of Ezra we saw Ezra trying to break apart the marriages between his people and foreigners, and I see this brief passage in Nehemiah as supporting evidence for why Ezra’s efforts were so important for preserving their nation (besides the moral reasons of obeying the Law).

The good news is that Nehemiah passes all of the challenges and the wall is completed.  In the next chapter, Nehemiah assigns men to various responsibilities and takes a census of the people.