The reference to the repairing of the walls…was going forward
could be construed as beginners’ work, offering yet little cause for concern. The additional words about the breaches' closing implies such progress that Jerusalem has become a defensible fortress. The reference to breaches closing echoes the note of the previous verse that all the wall was joined together to half its height.
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.