Sanballat

Leading political official of Samaria residing at Beth-horon in Ephraim. In a letter from Elephantine of Egypt, Sanballat was named as the governor of Samaria in 407 BC. Sanballat, along with Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arab, were adversaries of Nehemiah. They tried to prevent him from rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem during the postexilic period (Neh 2:10, 19; 4:1, 7; 6:1-14; 13:28). The Judean province probably had been included under Samaritan rule since its defeat by Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. Nehemiah’s determination to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was in essence an assertion of Judean independence from Sanballat and Samaritan control.