Nehemiah 2:4–10

Nehemiah is sent to Jerusalem

The king said to me, “What is it you want?”

Then I prayed to the God of heaven, 5 and I answered the king, “If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.”

6 Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, “How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?” It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.

7 I also said to him, “If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? 8 And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?” And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests. 9 So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me.

10 When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites.

As he began his mission, Nehemiah combined trust in God with a determination to use all the resources with which he had been blessed. From the start he realized that he faced a real battle and would need all the strength available to him in order to triumph.

Opposition to Nehemiah’s plans appears to have solidified before he reached Jerusalem and even before the exact nature of his plans was clear. Sanballat the Horonite was probably the governor of Samaria. The meaning of the term Horonite is uncertain. It may indicate that Sanballat was from the town of Beth Horon, northwest of Jerusalem. If Judah had been part of one province with Samaria before Nehemiah’s arrival, Sanballat’s opposition may have been partly due to fear that Nehemiah was receiving some of his territory.

Ammon was a region east of the Jordan River and had long been Israel’s rival. Non-biblical records show that this area was ruled by a Tobiad family not long after this time. The Tobiah in our text seems to be one of the first of this line. His exact position is uncertain. The word translated “official” is literally “slave,” or “servant.” He may have been a Persian appointee who was under the supervision of Sanballat. At any rate, the most powerful political figures in the area were set against Nehemiah’s plans from the start. Nehemiah had his work cut out for him.