Sanballat

Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible

Sanballat (Assyr. [Note: Assyrian.] Sin-ballit = ‘Sin, save the life’). The most inveterate of the opponents of Nehemiah. He was a native of Beth-horon, and apparently belonged to an old Bab. [Note: Babylonian.] family holding office under the Persian government. When Nehemiah came to Jerusalem to repair the walls, he, with his allies ( Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian), met him with derision; and after the work was well under way he stirred up the garrison of Samaria and planned an attack against the builders. This was prevented by the watchfulness of Nehemiah and the workmen. Several devices aimed against the life of Nehemiah were also thwarted by the sagacity of the latter. On Nehemiah’s second visit he banished from Jerusalem Manasseh (a son-in-law of Sanballat, and grandson of Eliashib ), who founded the Samaritan sect. See   Nehemiah 2:10;   Nehemiah 2:19;   Nehemiah 4:1 ff.;   Nehemiah 4:6;   Nehemiah 13:28 .

J. F. McCurdy.

Fausset's Bible Dictionary

A Moabite of Horonaim ( Nehemiah 2:10;  Nehemiah 2:19;  Nehemiah 13:28). Seemingly he had some command over "the army of Samaria" ( Nehemiah 4:2) under Artaxerxes. A perpetual opponent of Nehemiah from the time of his arrival in Judaea. (See Nehemiah .) Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian ( Nehemiah 2:19;  Nehemiah 4:7;  Nehemiah 4:6) were in league with him. His daughter married the high-priest Eliashib's grandson, Joiada's son; therefore Nehemiah chased him from him ( Nehemiah 13:28). Tobiah had formed a similar alliance with Eliashib, so that it looks as if Eliasbib concerted with the Samaritan party to thwart Nehemiah's reforming plans. Josephus' account of a Sanballat 100 years later under Alexander the Great seems unhistorical.

Smith's Bible Dictionary

Sanbal'lat. (Strength). A Moabite, of Horonaim.  Nehemiah 2:10;  Nehemiah 2:13;  Nehemiah 13:28. He held, apparently, some command in Samaria, at the time Nehemiah was preparing to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, B.C. 445,  Nehemiah 4:2, and from the moment of Nehemiah's arrival in Judea, he set himself to oppose every measure, for the welfare of Jerusalem. The only other incident in his life is his alliance with the high priest's family, by the marriage of his daughter, with one of the grandsons of Eliashib; but the expulsion from the priesthood of the guilty son of Joiada by Nehemiah promptly followed. Here the scriptural narrative ends.

Morrish Bible Dictionary

A Horonite, who seemed to act as a governor under the Persian king when Nehemiah returned from exile to rebuild Jerusalem. He was an enemy of the Jews, and by plots and guile hindered the work as far as he could. A descendant of the priests had become his son-in-law, whom Nehemiah rejected. His case is an illustration of the way in which, whenever God has work in progress, Satan finds an agent to oppose it.  Nehemiah 2:10,19;  Nehemiah 4:1,7;  Nehemiah 6:1-14;  Nehemiah 13:28 . See SAMARIA.

Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary

The great enemy to Israel after their return from the captivity of Babylon: (see  Nehemiah 2:19 and  Nehemiah 6:1-19) The name is not strictly derived from the Hebrew: it hath been thought that as Sene means bush, and Lut, to hide, the union of those words forming a suitable name for the enemies of God's people, Sanballat was so called to imply an enemy in secret.

People's Dictionary of the Bible

Sanballat ( San-Băl'Lat ), Heroes. A satrap of the king of Persia, in Samaria. He was a native of Horonaim, a town of Moab. He endeavored by every means to hinder Nehemiah in the work of rebuilding Jerusalem.  Nehemiah 2:10;  Nehemiah 4:1;  Nehemiah 6:1-14;  Nehemiah 13:28.

Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary

the governor of the Cuthites or Samaritans, and an enemy to the Jews. He was a native of Horon, a city beyond Jordan, in the country of the Moabites,  Nehemiah 2:10;  Nehemiah 2:19;  Nehemiah 4:6 .

Easton's Bible Dictionary

 Nehemiah 2:10,19 4:1-12 6 Nehemiah 13:28

Holman Bible Dictionary

Yahweh  Nehemiah 13:28 Nehemiah 2:10

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

(Heb. Sanballat', סִנְבִּלִּט ), A name of which the latter part is of uncertain etymology, but the first syllable is probably the Sanskrit San [Greek Σύν ], indicative of Strength; Sept. Σανβαλλάτ , Josephus, Σαναβαλλέτης ), a Horonite (q.v.), i.e. probably a native of Horonaim in Moab ( Nehemiah 2:10;  Nehemiah 2:19;  Nehemiah 13:28). There are two very different accounts of him.

All that we know of him from Scripture is that he had apparently some civil or military command in Samaria, in the service of Artaxerxes ( Nehemiah 4:2), and that, from the moment of Nehemiah's arrival in Judea, he set himself to oppose every measure for the welfare of Jerusalem, and was a constant adversary to the Tirshatha. B.C. 445. His companions in this hostility were Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian ( Nehemiah 2:19;  Nehemiah 4:7). For the details of their opposition, see Nehemiah 6, where the enmity between Sanballat and the Jews is brought out in the strongest colors. The only other incident in his life is his alliance with the high priest's family by the marriage of his daughter with one of the grandsons of Eliashib, which, from the similar connection formed by Tobiah the Ammonite ( Nehemiah 13:4), appears to have been part of a settled policy concerted between Eliashib and the Samaritan faction. The expulsion from the priesthood of the guilty son of Joiada by Nehemiah must have still further widened the breach between him and Sanballat, and between the two parties in the Jewish state. Here, however, the scriptural narrative ends — owing, probably, to Nehemiah's return to Persia — and with it likewise our knowledge of Sanballat. (See Nehemiah).

But on turning to the pages of Josephus a wholly new set of actions, in a totally different time, is brought before us in connection with Sanballat, while his name is entirely omitted in the account there given of the government of Nehemiah, which is placed in the reign of Xerxes. Josephus, after interposing the whole reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus between the death of Nehemiah and the transactions in which Sanballat took part, and utterly ignoring the very existence of Darius Nothus, Artaxerxes Mnemon, Ochus, etc., jumps at once to the reign of "Darius the last king," and tells us (Ant. 11, 7, 2) that Sanballat was his officer in Samaria, that he was a Cuthaean (i.e. a Samaritan) by birth, and that he gave his daughter Nicaso in marriage to Manasseh, the brother of the high priest Jaddua, and consequently the fourth in descent from Eliashib, who was high priest in the time of Nehemiah. He then relates that on the threat of his brother Jaddua and the other Jews to expel him from the priesthood unless he divorced his wife, Manasseh stated the case to Sanballat, who thereupon promised to use his influence with king Darius, not only to give him Sanballat's government, but to sanction the building of a rival temple on Mount Gerizim of which Manasseh should be the high priest. Manasseh, on this, agreed to retain his wife and join Sanballat's faction, which was further strengthened by the accession of all those priests and Levites (and they were many) who had taken strange wives. But just at this time happened the invasion of Alexander the Great; and Sanballat, with seven thousand men, joined him and renounced his allegiance to Darius (Ant. 11, 8, 4).

Being favorably received by the conqueror, he took the opportunity of speaking to him in behalf of Manasseh. He represented to him how much it was for his interest to divide the strength of the Jewish nation, and how many there were who wished for a temple in Samaria; and so obtained Alexander's permission to build the temple on Mount Gerizim, and make Manasseh the hereditary high priest. Shortly after this, Sanballat died; but the temple on Mount Gerizim remained, and the Shechemites, as they were called, continued also as a permanent schism, which was continually fed by all the lawless and disaffected Jews. Such is Josephus's account. If there is any truth in it, of course the Sanballat of whom he speaks is a different person from the Sanballat of Nehemiah, who flourished fully one hundred years earlier; but when we put together Josephus's silence concerning a Sanballat in Nehemiah's time, and the many coincidences in the lives of the Sanballat of Nehemiah and that of Josephus, together with the inconsistencies in Josephus's narrative (pointed out by Prideaux, Connect. 1, 288, 290, 395, 466), and its disagreement with what Eusebius tells of the relations of Alexander with Samaria (who says that Alexander appointed Andromachus governor of Judaea and the neighboring districts; that the Samaritans murdered him; and that Alexander, on his return, took Samaria in revenge, and settled a colony of Macedonians in it, and the inhabitants of Samaria retired to Sichem [Chronicles Can. p. 346]), and remember how apt Josephus is to follow any narrative, no matter how anachronistic and inconsistent with Scripture, we shall have no difficulty in concluding that his account of Sanballat is not historical. It is doubtless taken from some apocryphal romance, now lost, in which the writer, living under the empire of the Greeks, and at a time when the enmity of the Jews and Samaritans was at its height, chose the downfall of the Persian empire for the epoch, and Sanballat for the ideal instrument, of the consolidation of the Samaritan Church and the erection of the temple on Gerizim. To borrow events from some Scripture narrative and introduce some scriptural personage, without any regard to chronology or other propriety, was the regular method of such apocryphal books. (See 1 Esdras, apocryphal Esther, apocryphal additions to the book of Daniel, and the articles on them, and the story inserted by the Sept. after 2 Kings 12:24, etc.). To receive as historical Josephus's narrative of the building of the Samaritan temple by Sanballat, circumstantial as it is in its account of Manasseh's relationship to Jaddua, and Sanballat's intercourse with both Darius Codomanus and Alexander the Great, and yet to transplant it, as Prideaux does, to the time of Darius Nothus (B.C. 409), seems scarcely compatible with sound criticism. (See Samaritan).

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

san - bal´at ( סנבלּט , ṣanebhallaṭ  ; Greek and Vulgate (Jerome's Latin Bible, 390-405 A.D.) Sanaballát  ; Peshitta, Samballat ): Sanballat the Horonite was, if the appellation which follows his name indicates his origin, a Moabite of Horonaim, a city of Moab mentioned in   Isaiah 15:5;  Jeremiah 48:2 ,  Jeremiah 48:5 ,  Jeremiah 48:34; Josephus, Ant. , Xiii , xiii; Xiv , ii. He is named along with Tobiah, the Ammonite slave ( Nehemiah 4:1 ), and Geshem the Arabian ( Nehemiah 6:1 ) as the leading opponent of the Jews at the time when Nehemiah undertook to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem ( Nehemiah 2:10;  Nehemiah 4:1;  Nehemiah 6:1 ). He was related by marriage to the son of Eliashib, the high priest at the time of the annulment of the mixed marriages forbidden by the Law ( Nehemiah 13:28 ).

Renewed interest has been awakened in Sanballat from the fact that he is mentioned in the papyri I and 2 of Sachau ( Die aramaischen Papyrusurkunden aus Elephantine , Berlin, 1908, and in his later work, Aramaische Papyrus und Ostraka , Leipzig, 1911; compare Staerk's convenient edition in Lietzmanns Kleine Texte , Number 32,1908) as having been the governor ( paḥath ) of Samaria some time before the 17th year of Darius (Nothus), i.e. 408-407 BC, when Bagohi was governor of Judah. His two sons, Delaiah and Shelemiah, received a letter from Jedoniah and his companions the priests who were in Yeb (Elephantine) in Upper Egypt. This letter contained information concerning the state of affairs in the Jewish colony of Yeb, especially concerning the destruction of the temple or synagogue ( agora ) which had been erected at that place.

The address of this letter reads as follows: "To our lord Bagohi, the governor of Judea, his servants Jedoniah and his companions, the priests in the fortress of Yeb (Elephantine). May the God of Heaven inquire much at every time after the peace of our lord and put thee in favor before Darius the king," etc. The conclusion of the letter reads thus: "Now, thy servants, Jedoniah and his companions and the Jews, all citizens of Yeb, say thus: If it seems good to our lord, mayest thou think on the rebuilding of that temple (the agora which had been destroyed by the Egyptians). Since it has not been permitted us to rebuild it, do thou look on the receivers of thy benefactions and favors here in Egypt. Let a letter with regard to the rebuilding of the temple of the God Jaho in the fortress of Yeb, as it was formerly built, be sent from thee. In thy name will they offer the meal offerings, the incense, and the burnt offerings upon the altar of the God Jaho; and we shall always pray for thee, we and our wives and our children and all the Jews found here, until the temple has been rebuilt. And it will be to thee a meritorious work ( cedhāḳāh ) in the sight of Jaho, the God of Heaven, greater than the meritorious work of a man who offers to him a burnt offering and a sacrifice of a value equal to the value of 1,000 talents of silver. And as to the gold (probably that which was sent by the Jews to Bagohi as a baksheesh) we have sent word and given knowledge. Also, we have in our name communicated in a letter all (these) matters unto Delaiah and Shelemiah, the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria. Also, from all that has been done to us, Arsham (the satrap of Egypt) has learned nothing.

The 20th of Marcheshvan in the 17th year of Darius the king."

Sanballat is the Babylonian Sin-uballit, "may Sin give him life," a name occurring a number of times in the contract tablets from the time of Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonidus, and Darius Hystaspis. (See Tallquist, Neubabylonisches Namenbuch , 183.)

Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblial Literature

Sanbal´lat, a native of Horonaim, beyond the Jordan , and probably also a Moabitish chief, whom (perhaps from old national hatred) we find united in council with the Samaritans, and active in attempting to deter the returned exiles from fortifying Jerusalem (, sq.; 6:1. sq.). Subsequently, during the absence of Nehemiah in Persia, a son of Joiada, the high priest, was married to his daughter .