Ezra 4:1

¹¹All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand four hundred. Sheshbazzar brought all these up when the captives were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem.

⁹Behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of peace. I will give him rest from all his enemies all around; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days. ¹⁰He shall build a house for my name; and he will be my son, and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever.’

⁷In the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of his companions wrote to Artaxerxes king of Persia; and the writing of the letter was written in Syrian and delivered in the Syrian language. ⁸Rehum the chancellor and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king as follows. ⁹Then Rehum the chancellor, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their companions, the Dinaites, and the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Shushanchites, the Dehaites, the Elamites, ¹⁰and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over and settled in the city of Samaria, and in the rest of the country beyond the River, and so forth, wrote.

¹³Then Daniel was brought in before the king. The king spoke and said to Daniel, “Are you that Daniel of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of Judah?

⁹For on the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylon; and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God on him.

¹But when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry, and was very indignant, and mocked the Jews. ²He spoke before his brothers and the army of Samaria, and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, since they are burned?”

³Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, “What they are building, if a fox climbed up it, he would break down their stone wall.”

⁴“Hear, our God, for we are despised. Turn back their reproach on their own head. Give them up for a plunder in a land of captivity. ⁵Don’t cover their iniquity. Don’t let their sin be blotted out from before you; for they have insulted the builders.”

⁶So we built the wall; and all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.

⁷But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabians, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem went forward, and that the breaches began to be filled, they were very angry; ⁸and they all conspired together to come and fight against Jerusalem, and to cause confusion among us. ⁹But we made our prayer to our God, and set a watch against them day and night because of them.

¹⁰Judah said, “The strength of the bearers of burdens is fading and there is much rubble, so that we are not able to build the wall.” ¹¹Our adversaries said, “They will not know or see, until we come in among them and kill them, and cause the work to cease.”

¹⁶The children of Israel, the priests, the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy.

¹⁶The children of the captivity did so. Ezra the priest, with certain heads of fathers’ households, after their fathers’ houses, and all of them by their names, were set apart; and they sat down in the first day of the tenth month to examine the matter.

¹⁹The children of the captivity kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. ²⁰Because the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together, all of them were pure. They killed the Passover for all the children of the captivity, for their brothers the priests, and for themselves.

⁴But now the LORD my God has given me rest on every side. There is no enemy and no evil occurrence. ⁵Behold, I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD spoke to David my father, saying, ‘Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place shall build the house for my name.’