The word repaired
had occurred several times in the previous chapter to describe the labours of various work crews (for example, Nehemiah 3:4–6; see on Nehemiah 3:4). In the present verse, however, the term repairing
renders a Hebrew word that means healing.
People hostile to the Jews perceived the wall as a living thing such that healing was going up on the wall of Jerusalem
(literal translation). We are to realize that as the walls of stone were being reconstructed, healing was also happening within the community, and the surrounding nations understood that and resented it (Isaiah 1:5, where Judah’s sickness leads to exile).
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.