Nehemiah 6

¹ When Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and our other enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall and that not a single gap was left-though at that time I had not fixed the doors to the gates-

² Sanballat and Geshem sent me a message, ‘Come and meet us at Hac-chepirim in the Vale of Ono’. Now they intended some harm to me.

³ So I sent messengers to them to say, ‘I am engaged in a great undertaking and so cannot come down. The work would come to a halt if I left it to come down to you.’

⁴ Four times they sent me the same invitation and I made them the same reply.

⁵ The fifth time, with the same purpose in mind, Sanballat sent me his servant bearing an open letter.

⁶ It ran, ‘There is a rumour among the nations, so Gashmu[*a] says, that you and the Jews are thinking of rebelling, which is why you are building the wall; that you yourself are to become their king;

⁷ that you have even briefed prophets in your own interest in Jerusalem to proclaim: “Judah has a king”. These rumours will soon be reaching the king; so you had better come and talk things over with us.’

⁸ To this, however, I replied, ‘As regards what you say, nothing of the sort has occurred; it is a figment of your own imagination’.

⁹ For they were trying to frighten us, thinking, ‘Their hands will tire of the work, and it will never be finished’. But I meanwhile was making my hands even stronger.

¹⁰ I had been to visit Shemaiah son of Delaiah, son of Mehetabel, since he was prevented from coming to me. He said: ‘Let us meet at the Temple of God, in the innermost part of the sanctuary; let us shut the sanctuary doors, for they are coming to kill you, they are coming to kill you tonight’.

¹¹ But I retorted, ‘Is a man like me to run away? A man in my position to go into the sanctuary to save his life? I will not go.’

¹² I realised that God had not sent him to say this, but that he had pronounced this oracle over me because Tobiah was paying him

¹³ to frighten me into doing this, and so committing a sin as a result of which they would have been able to blacken my reputation and ridicule me.

¹⁴ Remember Tobiah, my God, for what he has done; and Noadiah the prophetess, and the other prophets who tried to frighten me.

¹⁵ The wall was finished within fifty-two days, on the twenty-fifth of Elul.[*b]

¹⁶ When all our enemies heard about it, and all the surrounding nations had seen it, they were deeply impressed and acknowledged that this work had been accomplished by the power of our God.

¹⁷ During this same period several of the authorities of Judah kept sending letter after letter to Tobiah, and letters from Tobiah kept arriving for them;

¹⁸ for he had many sworn to his interest in Judah, since he was son-in-law to Shecaniah son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan had married the daughter of Meshullam son of Berechiah.

¹⁹ They even cried up his good deeds in my presence, and they reported what I said back to him. And Tobiah kept on sending letters to frighten me.