Tobiah the Ammonite was with Sanballat. Tobiah said, “What do these Jews think they are building? If even a small fox climbed up on it, he would break down their wall of stones!”
Then they came back with another message from Ben Hadad. The message said, “I will completely destroy Samaria. I promise that there will be nothing left of that city! There won’t be enough of that city left for my men to find any souvenirs [220] to take home. May God destroy me if I don’t do this!”
Sanballat and Tobiah were two men that heard about what I was doing. They were very upset and angry that someone had come to help the people of Israel. Sanballat was from Horon and Tobiah is an Ammonite official.
But Sanballat from Horon, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard that we were building again. They made fun of us in a very ugly way. They said, “What are you doing? Are you turning against the king?”
Then Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and our other enemies heard that I had built the wall. We fixed all the holes in the wall. But we had not yet put the doors in the gates.
“An Ammonite or Moabite may not join with the men of Israel to worship the Lord. And none of their descendants [143] —to the tenth generation—may join in that group.