And the king said to me (the queen being seated by his side), How long will your journey take, and when will you come back? So the king was pleased to send me, and I gave him a fixed time.

But when it came to the ears of Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabians and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites, that the building of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and the broken places were being made good, they were full of wrath;

Then I sent to him, saying, No such things as you say are being done, they are only a fiction you have made up yourself.

Now before this, Eliashib the priest, who had been placed over the rooms of the house of our God, being a friend of Tobiah,