The easiest way to oppose something you do not like is to ridicule it, and this is the first thing Sanballat and Tobiah did. In Nehemiah 4 the text is vivid at this point, showing how Sanballat got Tobiah, his associates, and the army of Samaria together and made fun of the Jews in what must have been a great public forum: “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?”
Tobiah added, “What they are building – if even a fox climbed up on it, he would break down their wall of stones!”
The reason people ridicule those they oppose, aside from being so easy, is that it is demoralizing and frequently effective. It is effective because it strikes at the hidden insecurity or weakness that almost everybody has, including leaders. This is what was going on. Each of Sanballat’s five rhetorical questions and Tobiah’s taunt struck at a legitimate sense of weakness that Nehemiah and the others must have had.
“What are those feeble Jews doing?” This was directly to the point. The Jews were feeble, and they knew it. How could anyone as weak as they were hope to rebuild their city’s walls?
“Will they restore their wall?” Indeed! How could they restore a wall one and one-half to two and one-half miles in circumference? It had been built by people more numerous and stronger than they were. How could they even hope to reassemble those huge stones?
“Will they offer sacrifices?” “Are those fanatics going to pray the wall up? It is their only hope!” The taunt was an attack on the Jews’ faith, which was not that strong anyway. Do you not find it difficult when someone ridicules your faith? “Maybe you think God’s going to help you!” or “Why don’t you go home and pray about it [chuckle]?” they say. It is difficult not to be unsettled by such ridicule.
“Will they finish in a day?” This means, “Do they not they realize what an enormous task they are taking on?” This was effective because the Jews knew exactly how huge the task was.
“Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble – burned as they are?” This was an exaggeration. The gates had been burned but not the walls. They were not limestone, which might well have been calcined by the intense heat of the fire that had been used to destroy Jerusalem at the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest. The walls were not crumbled, only tumbled. But the question was nevertheless effective in reminding the Jews of the great and overwhelming dimensions of the task.
Tobiah’s taunt, “What they are building – if even a fox climbed up on it, he would break down their wall of stones!” had bite because, as excavation of these walls has shown, they did not turn out to be of the same quality as those that stood before them.
These were all very effective points. Yet the point cannot be missed that the only reason they were being uttered was that something important was nevertheless going forward and was perceived by these two governors as being likely to succeed. Their anger revealed their fear that what they were ridiculing might actually come to pass.
How did Nehemiah deal with this attack? We need to see three things: one he did not do, and two he did.
First, he did not retaliate. The first thing most of us do when we are ridiculed is snap back. We would say, “So they think we’re feeble, do they? Well, they’re not so strong themselves. If Nehemiah had, he would merely have lowered himself to the level of his critics, and he would have come out second best since they were stronger and more important than he was in the eyes of the world.
Second, Nehemiah prayed. This is important not only because it means he turned to God for help, as he always did, but also because he did not merely bottle up his feelings or try to suppress them, which would have solved nothing. Nehemiah was able to put it into God’s hands and let him be the arbiter of the dispute and the judge of the Jews’ opponents.
What was the result of Nehemiah’s prayer? He does not tell us explicitly. But the first great benefit was undoubtedly that it diffused his anger, since he does not show anger as he proceeds.
Third, Nehemiah went on with the work. Since he had left the taunts of his enemies with God, he no longer needed to be concerned about them and could get on with the task God had given him. “The people worked with all their heart.”
It was the ancient version of the World War II slogan: “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!”
Maranatha!
(mar-uh-nath-uh – “Our Lord Comes”)