When Sanballat and Tobiah, &c.— The ingenious publisher of the Ruins of Balbeck tells us, that in Palestine he has often seen the husbandman sowing, accompanied by an armed friend, to prevent his being robbed of the seed by the Arabs. This robbing the husbandman of his seed seems to have been an ancient practice of theirs, and to have been referred to, Psalms 126:5-6 and made an image by the Psalmist of the happy issue of the first essays of the Jews to re-people their country. For surely it is much more natural to suppose that these verses referred to a violence of this sort, than to imagine, with many interpreters who have treated upon this circumstance, that they allude to a countryman's anxiety, who sows his corn in a very scarce time, and is afraid of the failure of his next crop. The Israelites, who returned to Babylon upon the proclamation of Cyrus, were undoubtedly in similar circumstances to husbandmen sowing their corn amidst surrounding encampments of oppressive Arabs. Their rebuilding their towns and their temple resembled a time of sowing; for from these things they were willing to hope for a great increase of people; but they who continued in Babylon had reason to be jealous that the neighbouring nations would defeat these efforts, and destroy these rising settlements. The sacred historian, in this passage, expressly mentions such difficulties; nor was it difficult to foresee these oppositions: the Arabs had, undoubtedly, pastured their flocks and herds, and pitched their tents all over Judea, when left desolate; and perhaps others of the neighbouring nations had seized upon some of the dispeopled districts which lay most convenient for them: it was the interest then of the Arabs, and of such other nations, to discourage, as far as in them lay, the return of Israel in any numbers into the country of their fathers. In opposition to this jealousy, the prophet expresses, perhaps predicts, his hope, that there would be a happy issue of these beginnings to re-people their country: "Make the people of our captivity to return, O Lord! into their country; and, like the streams of the south, to cause these desarts to flourish again. Let them be persuaded, that, though they lay these foundations of re-peopling their country with an anxiety like that of a poor husbandman, who goes forth weeping, for fear he should be robbed of his seed, they shall feel a joy hereafter, like his, when he brings back his sheaves with rejoicing, in the so thoroughly re-establishing Israel in Judea, as to have no cause to apprehend any thing from the surrounding nations." Observations, p. 52.
Related Commentaries of Nehemiah 4:7
Nehemiah 4:7-8
7 But it came to pass, that when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, heard that the walls of Jerusalem were made up,c and that the breaches began to be stopped, then they were very wroth,
8 And conspired all of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinderd it.