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Updated: May 12, 2025
Let us try for the future to be thick-skinned, and when Gashmu's tongue is whispering, and whenever some busybody like Sanballat repeats Gashmu's words to us, let us act as Nehemiah did. Let us take no notice of the repeated tittle-tattle.
A friend called my attention to the fact that Sanballat wanted to hold consultation with Nehemiah in the plain of O-no. That is the place where more people stay, to-day, than in any other. They are always protesting, throwing doubt on grand undertakings; and while you are in the mountain of O-yes, they spend their time on the plain of O-no.
Nehemiah opened the roll, and found it contained an insulting message from Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, a message which was evidently expressed in very scornful and unpleasant words. Do you, Nehemiah, intend to fortify Jerusalem, and then set up the standard of rebellion against Persia?
But it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend. Nehemiah could not help feeling it. He had borne patiently ridicule, force, deceit from without; whatever of harm or mischief Sanballat did, he could not help, nor was he surprised at it.
There was a crash, a scream of rage and fear, and the unfortunate Cleanthes fell under the hoofs of his own steeds: a terrible sight, against which Esther covered her eyes. On swept the Corinthian, on the Byzantine, on the Sidonian. Sanballat looked for Ben-Hur, and turned again to Drusus and his coterie. "A hundred sestertii on the Jew!" he cried. "Taken!" answered Drusus.
Therefore was he hired, that I should be afraid, and do so, and sin, and that they might have matter for an evil report, that they might reproach me. My God, think thou upon Tobiah and Sanballat according to these their works, and on the prophetess Noadiah, and the rest of the prophets, that would have put me in fear.
At the court of Sanballat was a friend of his, Geshem the Arabian, the head or chief of a tribe of Arabs, which we find, from the ancient Assyrian monuments recently discovered, had been planted in Samaria by Sargon, King of Assyria. This man Geshem was therefore a Bedouin, a descendant of Esau.
Then when Sanballat had done speaking, there follows the loud coarse sneer of Secretary Tobiah. 'Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall. We can picture to ourselves the burst of laughter with which this speech would be hailed by the bystanders, the officers and courtiers of Sanballat. What does Nehemiah answer?
Judg. ix. 1-6, 18. Jarha, an Egyptian, the servant of Sheshan, married his daughter. Tobiah, "the servant" and an Ammonite married the daughter of Shecaniah one of the chief men among the Jews in Jerusalem and was the intimate associate of Sanballat the governor of the Samaritans.
Priest though he was, he had married the daughter of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, a heathen girl, who was rich and possibly good-looking, and whose father was the most powerful man in the country, but who did not fear or own the God of Israel. And the grandfather, so far from forbidding the marriage, seems to have connived at it and sanctioned it.
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