Nehemiah 2:10

Sanballat. Certain remarks made by Nehemiah (see ch. 4:1, 2) were long interpreted by scholars as indicating that Sanballat was governor of Samaria. Now one of the Elephantine papyri (Cowley, Aramaic Papyri, No. 30), written in the year 407 B.C., definitely settles the question with a direct reference to Sanballat as “governor of Samaria.” This fact explains why he was so dangerous a foe of Nehemiah. Being more than an ordinary citizen, and with an army at his disposal (ch. 4:2), he was in a position to do much harm and was determined to frustrate Nehemiah’s plans.

The Horonite. Nehemiah does not reveal Sanballat’s official position, and calls him only “the Horonite.” Whether this is done in contempt is uncertain. It is also uncertain whether this designation refers to Sanballat as coming from the Moabite city of Horonaim (Jer. 48:34), which has not yet been identified; or as coming from one of the two cities of Beth-horon (Joshua 16:3, 5; etc.), now Beit ‘Ur el-Foqa and Beit ‘Ur et-Tahta, about 12 mi. northwest of Jerusalem as the crow flies, and in Nehemiah’s time belonging to Samaria. Some commentators suggest that Nehemiah’s contempt for Sanballat can best be explained if the latter came from Moab, and was therefore not even a real Samaritan.

Servant. Heb. ‘ebed, “servant,” sometimes used in Biblical and extra-Biblical documents to designate high government officials (2 Kings 24:10, 11; Lam. 5:8). Hence, Tobiah may have been a high official in the province of Ammon in Transjordan. The family of Tobiah later became known as one of the most influential families of Transjordan. One of his descendants was in possession of a castle in Ammon in the time of the early Ptolemies, and furnished the king of Egypt with onagers (wild asses), horses, and dogs. The ruins of his castle at ‘Arak el-Emir are still visible, halfway between Jericho and Amman, and the name of Tobiah is carved in the walls outside the entrance to a cave.

Grieved them exceedingly. When Zerubbabel rejected the cooperation of the Samaritans in the rebuilding of the Temple (Ezra 4:3), there developed between the two peoples a spirit of animosity that persisted till the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. This enmity may have extended to other neighboring nations, such as the Ammonites and the Arabians (see Neh. 2:19; 4:7), especially during Ezra’s reform (Ezra 9, 10). Upon learning the reasons for Nehemiah’s journey, and recognizing that he had come to further the interests of the people of Judah, they probably made it clear to him that they had influential connections in Jerusalem (Neh. 13:4-8, 28). This would explain the great care and secrecy with which Nehemiah carried out his initial investigations upon his arrival.