Lives of Scripture

Tobiah the Ammonite official, closely allied with Sanballat, mocked Nehemiah's wall-building project from its earliest stages, adding his own scornful jab that even a fox climbing the wall would break it down (Nehemiah 2:10, 19; 4:3). He joined Sanballat's plots to attack the builders by surprise and to intimidate Nehemiah into abandoning the work through threats and false accusations (4:7-8; 6:1-9). What distinguishes Tobiah's opposition is how deeply compromised Jerusalem's own nobility already was toward him: he had married a Jewish wife, his son had married the daughter of a prominent Jewish official, and "many in Judah were bound by oath to him," continually reporting his good deeds to Nehemiah and relaying Nehemiah's own words back to Tobiah (6:17-19). Even the high priest Eliashib was related to him by marriage and, during a later period when Nehemiah had returned briefly to Persia, had given Tobiah an entire room inside the temple courts, previously used for storing tithes and offerings, to live in (13:4-5). When Nehemiah came back to Jerusalem and discovered this, he was furious, personally threw all of Tobiah's household possessions out of the room, and had it ceremonially cleansed and restored to its proper use for the temple's offerings (13:6-9). Tobiah's story shows opposition to God's work operating not only through open threats, but through compromise and infiltration among God's own people.