In Nehemiah, chapter four, verse four, Nehemiah’s prayer against the enemy was motivated by his faith in God and his love for God’s people, as in Jeremiah eighteen, verse twenty-three, and Revelation six, verse ten.
When Nehemiah heard of these contemptuous words, he committed the matter to God, pleading Him to hear how they (the people of God) are being scorned (a subject of contempt), to turn the reproach of the enemies upon their head, and to give them up the plunder in a land of captivity, in a land in which they would dwell as captives. Nehemiah supplicates, moreover, that God would not cover but forgive, as in Psalm eighty-five, verse three. Their iniquity, and that their sin might not remain unpunished, “for they have provoked to wrath before the builders,” openly challenged the wrath of God by despising Him before the builders so that they heard it.
Nehemiah describes the matter with the behavior of Sanballat and his comments in chapter four, verse two. “And he spake before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, What do these feeble Jews? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish, which are burned?” Then there is Tobiah, who was there by Sanballat, adding his opinion about the situation with people of God building the wall in the following verse three. “Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they have built if a fox goes up, he shall even break down their stone wall.”
It is always right to pray that God will oppose His enemies or turn back the hearts of those who are trying to destroy His work or harm His children.