Sanballat next asks, Will they sacrifice?
The point of this question is, since the Jews are so feeble that they surely can never complete the project by themselves, are they going to bring sacrifices to their God to solicit his help? That question would cue the laughter, for this is the God who couldn’t defend his city (or temple) from Nebuchadnezzar some one hundred fifty years ago and has not managed to have it rebuilt ever since! With this third question, then, Sanballat is mocking the Jews’ God, and by extension their faith in God. Here is a direct broadside against Nehemiah’s expression of confidence in the Lord as he had expressed it to Sanballat in Nehemiah 2:20.
2 And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?”