Nehemiah 6

₁I had finished building the wall and had repaired every place where it was broken down, but we had not put in the doors of the gates. Some people told Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem, the Arabian, and our other enemies this. ₂Then Sanballat and Geshem sent me a message and asked me to meet them in the village of the Ono Valley. I knew they wanted to hurt me. ₃I sent the messengers back to them and told them: ‘I am doing an important work and I can not come. Why should I stop working? I can not go away from here and come to you.’

₄They sent me the same message 4 times and I gave them the same answer each time. ₅Sanballat then sent the same message for the 5th time, but this time the letter was open and any person could have read it. ₆In the letter he wrote: ‘The people of some nations say that the people of Judah want to rebel_against the king and Geshem has said it is true. They are saying that this is why you have built the wall. They say that you want to become the king_of_the_Jews. ₇They say that you have chosen prophets in Jerusalem who will shout and say: “Nehemiah is now the king in Judah.” I want you to know that they will tell the king about this. That is why you must come so that we can talk about it.’

₈I told him: ‘What you are saying is not_true. You have made up this story yourself.’ ₉Yes, they wanted to make all of us afraid. They thought that we would be discouraged and would stop working. So I prayed and asked God to make me strong.

₁₀I went to the house of Shemaiah, son of Delaiah, son of Mehetabel. He could not come out of his house and told me to meet him in the temple, inside the building. He said we must close the doors because there were people who wanted to kill me that night. ₁₁But I told him: ‘No, I will not run away and flee. I will not hide in the temple to save my life, I will not go into the temple.’

₁₂Then Shemaiah told me to come to him because God had given him a message that he wanted to give to me. But then I realised that God had not given Shemaiah a message. It was Tobiah and Sanballat who had paid him to tell me this. ₁₃They paid him to say this to me. Shemaiah wanted me to become afraid and to do what he said. If I went into the temple, then I would have sinned because I am not a priest and then everyone would have said bad things about me. ₁₄I prayed and said: ‘My God, please remember what Sanballat and Tobiah did. Please also remember how the prophet Noadiah and the other prophets tried to make me afraid.’

₁₅We finished building the wall on the 25th day of the month of Elul. We worked for 52 days. ₁₆When our enemies and the people of the other nations around us saw it, they became discouraged because they knew that God had helped us to finish this work. ₁₇At that time a lot of the important people of Judah had sent letters to Tobiah and he had sent letters to them ₁₈because he was family of many people in Judah. He was a son-in-law of Shekaniah, son of Arah, and his son Jonathan was married to a daughter of Meshullam, son of Berekiah. ₁₉They told me again and again that Tobiah was a very good man and they told him everything that I had said. Tobiah sent letters to me and tried to make me afraid.