Nehemiah 6:8

There are no such thingsdone] Literally, -it has not happened or it has not been done according to these words." Nehemiah contents himself with curtly retorting that there is no sort of foundation for Sanballat's words. The letters of Artaxerxes to -the governor beyond the river" (Nehemiah 2:9) were well known to all; Nehemiah could not be a rebel; he had royal and official support for his work. And the assertion that he was currently rumoured to be engaged in an insurrectionary movement was a mere pretence. The very rumour, he replies, is of Sanballat's own making; and such as it is, it has nothing to go upon.

Nehemiah saw that the object of the letter was to damage him in the eyes of the people. Compare Sennacherib's messengers, 2 Chronicles 32:18.

thou feignest them out of thine own heart i.e. your assertion that a rumour of this kind is being circulated is as much your own invention as the statements which you graft upon it. -Feignest." The Hebrew word so rendered only occurs elsewhere in the O. T. in 1 Kings 12:33, -in the month which he had devised of his own heart."