When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard [of it], it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel.
10. When Sanballat the Horonite] That is, the Moabite, Isa 15:4 Jeremiah 48:3; Jeremiah 48:5; Jeremiah 48:34. His name signifieth, saith one, a pure enemy; he was come of that spiteful people, who were anciently irked because of Israel, Numbers 22:3,4, or did inwardly fret and vex at them, as Exodus 1:12, who yet were allied unto them, and did them no harm in their passage by them, yea, had done them good by the slaughter of the Amorites, their encroaching neighbours.
And Tobiah the servant] A servant or bondslave once he had been, though now a Toparch, a lieutenant to the king of Persia. Now such are most troublesome, Proverbs 30:22 .
Asperlus nihil est humili, cum surgit in altum.
Aφορητος εστιν ευτυχων μαστιγιας .
Heard it] As they might soon do by means of their wives, who were Jewesses. And the Jews to this day are generally found the most nimble and mercurial wits in the world. Every vizier and bashaw of state among the Turks useth to keep a Jew of his private counsel; whose malice, wit, and experience of Christendom, with their continual intelligence, is thought to advise most of that mischief which the Turk puts in execution against us.
It grieved them exceedingly] Heb. It seemed to them an evil, a great evil; it displeased them sore, and vexed them at the very heart, such was their spleen and spite. Envy is a deadly mischief; and because it cannot feed upon other men's hearts, it feedeth upon its own, drinking up the most part of its own venom. The envious man is not like the maid in Avicen, who, feeding upon poison, was herself healthy, yet infected others with her venomous breath; but like the serpent Porphyrius, which is full of poison, but, wanting teeth, hurteth none but himself; or as the hill Aetna, &c.
That there was come a man to seek the welfare, &c.] This they looked upon with an evil eye, and were vexed, Invidia Siculi, &c. Who can stand before envy? Proverbs 27:4. It espieth with great grief the smallest things the good man doth or hath, and is, therefore, absolutely the best thing to clear the eyesight, said Actius Sincerus, a nobleman, to King Frederick.