Nehemiah 4:2

2 And in the hearing of his countrymen and the army of Samaria he said, What are these feeble Jews doing? will they make themselves strong? will they make offerings? will they get the work done in a day? will they make the stones which have been burned come again out of the dust?

Nehemiah 4:2 Meaning and Commentary

Nehemiah 4:2

And he spake before his brethren
Tobiah the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, and perhaps some other governors of the king of Persia in those parts:

and before the army of Samaria:
which, and the inhabitants of it, were implacable enemies of the Jews:

and said, what do these feeble Jews?
what do they pretend to do, or what can they do?

will they fortify themselves?
by building a wall about their city; can they think they shall ever be able to do this, or that it will be allowed?

will they sacrifice?
meaning not their daily sacrifice, as Jarchi, that they had done a long time, but for the dedication of their building, as Aben Ezra:

will they make an end in a day?
they seem to be in as great a hurry and haste as if they meant it; and indeed, unless they can do it very quickly, they never will: they will soon be stopped:

will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are
burnt?
where will they find materials? do they imagine that they can make burnt stones firm and strong again, or harden the dust and rubbish into stones, or make that, which is as if dead, alive? to do this is the same as to revive a dead man, and they may as well think of doing the one as the other; burnt stones being reckoned as dead, as Eben Ezra observes.

Nehemiah 4:2 In-Context

1 Now, Sanballat, hearing that we were building the wall, was very angry, and in his wrath made sport of the Jews.

2 And in the hearing of his countrymen and the army of Samaria he said, What are these feeble Jews doing? will they make themselves strong? will they make offerings? will they get the work done in a day? will they make the stones which have been burned come again out of the dust?

3 Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Such is their building that if a fox goes up it, their stone wall will be broken down.

4 Give ear, O our God, for we are looked down on: let their words of shame be turned back on themselves, and let them be given up to wasting in a land where they are prisoners:

5 Let not their wrongdoing be covered or their sin washed away from before you: for they have made you angry before the builders.