In his previous paragraph, Nehemiah had recorded the scorn Sanballat and Tobiah had directed against the men rebuilding Jerusalem’s broken-down walls. He had recorded also his response, namely, that he brought this abuse to God in God-centred prayer. The Lord granted that the builders maintained their resolve to keep building so that good progress was being made on the wall’s reconstruction. The present paragraph records the enemies’ frustration with the failure of their earlier attempt to stop the rebuilding and how they sought to increase the pressure.
7 But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry.