SANBALLAT săn băl’ ət (סַנְבַלַּ֣ט, LXX Σαναβαλλάτ. From Babylonian, sin-uballit, May Sin [the moon god] give him life.)

Called the Horonite (Neh 2:10), prob. from Beth-horon in the S of Ephraim (Josh 10:10; 2 Chron 8:5). He is joined with Tobiah and Geshem as an opponent of Nehemiah (Neh 2:10, 19; 4:1-9; 6:1-14), but in 13:28 his daughter has married a son of Eliashib the high priest.

Among the Elephantine Papyri of 407 b.c. a letter to Bagoas, governor of Judah, refers to another letter sent to “Delaiah and Shelemiah, the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria.” This wording shows that Sanballat was then very old, and the effective control was in the hands of his sons. In the time of Nehemiah he may already have been governor of Samaria. This would account for his influence, and he had prob. hoped to become joint governor of Samaria and Judah if Nehemiah had not come.

In spite of his foreign name, he gave his sons names with a Yahweh ending, but he may well have been descended from the mixed races who had been brought into the northern kingdom, and who had a syncretistic worship with a preference for Yahweh (2 Kings 18:23).

Josephus makes Sanballat the founder of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, with his son-in-law Manasseh as high priest, Manasseh being brother to the Jewish high priest, Jaddua (Antiq. XI. viii. 2). The situation he describes is not unlike that of Nehemiah 13:28, 29, but Josephus dates it in the time of Alexander the Great about a cent. later. Either there were two men with the name of Sanballat, which is very possible, or Josephus has mistaken either the name or the period.

See also Geshem, Tobiah, Nehemiah.

Bibliography C. C. Torrey, Sanballat the Horonite, JBL XLVII (1928); H. H. Rowley, “Sanballat and the Samaritan Temple,” in Men of God (1963).