Anyone who has ever tried to rebuild something that had fallen, a marriage, a reputation, an abandoned project, knows the voice that laughs before the first stone is even set in place. In the Bible, that voice has a name: Sanballat.
He was the Persian governor of Samaria when the Jews returned from exile to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, around 445 BC. A fortified Jerusalem threatened the balance of power that he and his allies had held for generations.
When he heard of the work, he grew furious and mocked the Jews before the army of Samaria: “What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble, burned as they are?” (Nehemiah 4:2). His ally Tobiah added to the mockery, saying that even a fox would break down their wall of stones (Nehemiah 4:3).
When laughter stopped no one, Sanballat joined forces with Tobiah, with Arabs, and with men of Ashdod to attack Jerusalem by surprise (Nehemiah 4:7-8). Nehemiah responded by praying and arming the people, who began building with a tool in one hand and a sword in the other.
Defeated by force, Sanballat tried manipulation: he invited Nehemiah four times to a meeting on the plain of Ono, and four times heard the same refusal: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3). On the fifth attempt he sent an open letter accusing Nehemiah of planning a revolt to become king (Nehemiah 6:6-7) and even bribed a false prophet to frighten him.
None of it stopped the work. The wall was finished in fifty-two days, and even his enemies recognized that it had been done with the help of God (Nehemiah 6:16). Years later, Sanballat was still trying to infiltrate from within, marrying his daughter to the grandson of the high priest, until Nehemiah drove the man out (Nehemiah 13:28).
Sanballat’s story is a reminder that not all opposition to God’s work arrives with swords: sometimes it arrives with smiles, invitations, and well-written letters. Whoever builds something that matters usually hears laughter before applause.
Nehemiah did not answer the mockery by arguing, nor the threat by fleeing, nor the invitation by attending: he simply kept building. That is the answer that still serves anyone today who carries a calling others insist on mocking.
