These were those who went up from Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Cherub, Addan, and Immer; but they could not show whether their fathers' house, and their descent, were from Israel:

These sought their place among those who were registered by genealogy, but they were not found: therefore were they deemed polluted and put from the priesthood.

From the first day of the seventh month, they began to offer burnt offerings to the LORD; but the foundation of the LORD's temple was not yet laid.

But many of the priests and Levites and heads of ancestral houses, the old men who had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice. Many also shouted aloud for joy,

But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of ancestral houses of Israel, said to them, "You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves together will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us."

But the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews, and they did not make them cease, until the matter should come to Darius, and then answer should be returned by letter concerning it.

But after that our fathers had provoked the God of heaven to wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house, and carried the people away into Babylon.

But in the first year of Cyrus king of Babylon, Cyrus the king made a decree to build this house of God.

For I was ashamed to ask of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way, because we had spoken to the king, saying, "The hand of our God is on all those who seek him, for good; but his power and his wrath is against all those who forsake him."

For we are bondservants; yet our God has not forsaken us in our bondage, but has extended loving kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem.

But the people are many, and it is a time of much rain, and we are not able to stand outside; neither is this a work of one day or two; for we have greatly transgressed in this matter.