Meaning of SANBALLAT

Samaritan influence (Neh. 2:10), called Horonite, which does not seem to mean that he came from Horonaim, a city of Moab, but from Beth-horon (cf. Neh. 4:2; 6:2).

He opposed Nehemiah's rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, but he did not achieve his goal (Neh. 4:7, 8). Sanballat and his accomplice requested an interview with Nehemiah, whom they wanted to assassinate (Neh. 6: 1-4).

Nehemiah having refused to meet with them, they tried in vain to intimidate him, accusing him of sedition (Neh. 6:5-14).

Sanballat the Horonite was a contemporary of the high priest Eliashib, who was Jaddua's great-grandfather. Sanballat associated with Tobiah the Ammonite and opposed Nehemiah in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (Neh. 3:1; 4:7).

He was governor of Samaria shortly before 407 BC, in the seventeenth year of Darius Notus (Elephantine Papyri).

A son of Jehoiada (who was the son of the high priest Eliashib) married a daughter of Sanballat. Nehemiah punished him by excluding him from the priesthood (Neh. 13:4, 28).

Josephus mentions a Sanballat, a native of Cuta, who Darius, the last king of Persia (336/5 - 331 BC), sent to Samaria as governor. When Darius fell, this Sanballat gave his support to Alexander the Great in 331 BC.

His daughter Nicasso was given as a wife to Manasseh, brother of the high priest Jaddua. This marriage to a foreign woman was frowned upon by the Jewish authorities who expelled Manasseh from the Temple in Jerusalem.

Sanballat, with the consent of Alexander, then erected a temple on Mount Gerizim, and made his son-in-law the high priest of this sanctuary (Ant. 11:7, 2; 8:2, 4).

These statements of Josephus do not agree well with the biblical data about Sanballat. Ancient commentators thought that Josephus was speaking of some later Sanballat.

But Josephus links the Horonite Sanballat with Neh's marriage. 13:28. It is very likely that the Jewish historian placed Sanballat 100 years later to fit the facts with his opinion that Sanballat's son-in-law had not only founded or developed the religion of the Samaritans, but had also founded the temple of Gerizim.

Josephus believed that this temple had been erected after Alexander's conquest (Ant. 13:9, 1), about two centuries before 128 BC, and that the high priest Jaddua and Alexander the Great had been contemporaries (Ant. 11:8 , 5).

Josephus makes a dating error (which is certainly not the only one) by placing Nehemiah's mission in the 25th year of Xerxes (who only reigned 21 years, Ant. 11:5, 7), instead of placing it in the 20th year. of Artaxerxes, his successor (Neh. 2:1).

And to Ezra's arrival in Jerusalem he assigns the date of the 7th year of Xerxes (Ant. 11: 5, 2), instead of placing this date 21 years later, in the 7th year of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7: 1, 8). Finally, he confuses Onias I with Onias III, who lived a century later (1 Mac. 12:7, 20; Ant. 12:4, 10).