SANBALLAT (thZ:t) ; Sept. .7.,aval3aXXcir), a native of Horonaim, beyond the Jordan (Neh. ii. to), and probably also a Moabitish chief, whom (probably from old national hatred) we find united in council with the Samaritans, and active in at tempting to deter the returned exiles from fortifying Jerusalem (Neh. iv. r, seq. ; vi. 1, seg.) Subse quently, during the absence of Nehemiah in Persia, a son of Joiada, the high-priest, was married to his daughter (Neh. xiii. 2S). Whether Sanballat held any public office as governor over the Moabites, or over the Samaritans, the record does not state. Such a character is usually ascribed to him on the supposed authority of a passage of Josephus, who speaks of a Sanballat, Cuthean by birth, who was sent by the last Darius as governor of Samaria (A /dig. xi. 7. 2). The time assigned to this San ballat is 120 years later than that of the Sanballat of Nehemiah, and we can only identify the one with the other by supposing that Josephus was inistaken both in the age and nation of the individual whom he mentions. Some admit this conclusion, as Josephus goes on to state how this person gave his daughter in marriage to a son of the high-priest, which high-priest, however, he tells us was Jaddua, in accordance with the date he has given. The
son of the high-priest thus married to the daughter of Sanballat was named Manasseh, and is farther stated by Josephus to have become the high-priest of the schismatical temple which his father-in-law established for the Samaritans in Mount Gerizim [SAmARITANs]. Upon the whole, as the account in Josephus is so circumstantial, it seems probable that, notwithstanding the similarity of name and other circumstances, his Sanballat is not to be understood as the same that obstructed the labours of Nehemiah. It is just possible that the Jewish historian, who does not mention this contemporary of Nehemiah purposely, on account of some similar circumstance transferred the history and name of Nehemiah's Sanballat to fill up the ac count of a later personage, of whose name and origin he may have been ignorant. But there is much obscurity and confusion in that part of his work in which he has lost the guidance of the canonical history, and llas not acquired that of the books of Maccabees.—J. K.