Then the heads of ancestral houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, even all whose spirit God had stirred to go up rose up to build the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem.

Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the house of the LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought out of Jerusalem, and had put in the house of his gods;

Now these are the children of the province, who went up out of the captivity of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away to Babylon, and who returned to Jerusalem and Judah, everyone to his city;

besides their male servants and their female servants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty-seven: and they had two hundred singing men and singing women.

When the seventh month had come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem.

They also gave money to the masons, and to the carpenters. They also gave food, drink, and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa, according to the grant that they had from Cyrus King of Persia.

Now in the second year of their coming to God's house at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and the rest of their brothers the priests and the Levites, and all those who had come out of the captivity to Jerusalem, began the work and appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward, to have the oversight of the work of the LORD's house.

They sang to one another in praising and giving thanks to the LORD, "For he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever toward Israel." All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD had been 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 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.

The gold and silver vessels also of God's house, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that was in Jerusalem, and brought into the temple of Babylon, those Cyrus the king took out of the temple of Babylon, and they were delivered to one whose name was Sheshbazzar, whom he had made governor;

Then Tattenai, the governor beyond the River, Shetharbozenai, and their companions, because Darius the king had sent a decree, did accordingly with all diligence.

For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were pure: and they killed the Passover for all the children of the captivity, and for their brothers the priests, and for themselves.

The children of Israel who had come again out of the captivity, and all such as had separated themselves to them from the filthiness of the nations of the land, to seek the LORD, the God of Israel, ate,

and kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy: for the LORD had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, to strengthen their hands in the work of God's house, the God of Israel.

this Ezra went up from Babylon: and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the LORD, the God of Israel, had given; and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the LORD his God on him.

For Ezra had set his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances.

and from the temple servants, whom David and the officials had given for the service of the Levites, two hundred and twenty temple servants. All of them were mentioned by name.

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."

and weighed to them the silver, and the gold, and the vessels, even the offering for the house of our God, which the king, and his counselors, and his officials, and all Israel there present, had offered:

The children of the captivity, who had come out of exile, offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel, twelve bulls for all Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven lambs, and twelve male goats for a sin offering: all this was a burnt offering to the LORD.

shall we again break your commandments, and join in affinity with the peoples that do these abominations? Wouldn't you be angry with us until you had consumed us, so that there should be no remnant, nor any to escape?

They made an end with all the men who had married foreign women by the first day of the first month.

Among the sons of the priests there were found who had married foreign women: of the sons of Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and his brothers, Maaseiah, and Eliezer, and Jarib, and Gedaliah.

All these had taken foreign wives; and some of them had wives by whom they had children.