But it so happened, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant, and mocked the Jews. And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, "What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish—stones that are burned?" Now Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, "Whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall."
Three Targets
Think of a woman in Subang who bakes from her own kitchen. She has regular orders, a following, and a small van she's still paying off. One week a competitor tells the group chats that she's a hobbyist with no real shop, gone in six months. That one sentence hit three things at once: who she is, what she stands for, and what she's built.
Sanballat plays the same card. In front of his brothers and the army of Samaria, he calls the builders feeble, jeers at their worship with a question about sacrifices, and laughs at the work as something no one finishes in a day. Scholars read the sacrifice question in more than one way, and every reading mocks their devotion. Identity, faith, and work come under fire together, and the attack wants an audience.
Sanballat sneers because the wall is going up. We feel the sting for the same reason: the wall matters to us.
Contempt aims at who we are, what we believe, and what we're building, and it finds us when the wall is going up.
Burned Stones
Tobiah adds a line meant to get a laugh: even a fox walking along the top would knock the wall down. It lands because the wall is half-built, and a half-built wall always looks easy to flatten.
Sanballat's question about burned stones cuts deeper. He's right about the material. The builders are working with fire-scarred rock from a city that fell.
Most of us build from that kind of rubble: a marriage restored after a hard year; a business restarted after a bad quarter; a faith picked up again after a failure. The mockery points at the burn marks and calls them proof. Nehemiah looks at the same stones and keeps building.
Burned stones still make a wall when God's people lay them.
Reflect
- Of the three targets (who you are, what you believe, what you're building), which one do the voices around you aim at most often?
- Which burned stone from your own rubble will you lay today, whatever has been said about it?
Pray
Lord, you heard every word Sanballat spoke, and you hear the words said about me too, in the group chat and across the dinner table. I say them out loud to you now, one at a time, and leave them in your hands. Show me the burned stone that belongs in my hands today, and give me strength to set it. The wall is yours and the work is yours. I trust you to finish what you began. Amen.