That Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah; and in answer to my request for news of the Jews who had been prisoners and had got away, and of Jerusalem,

Then, after hearing these words, for some days I gave myself up to weeping and sorrow, seated on the earth; and taking no food I made prayer to the God of heaven,

And said, O Lord, the God of heaven, the great God, greatly to be feared, keeping faith and mercy with those who have love for him and are true to his laws:

But if you come back to me and keep my orders and do them, even if those of you who have been forced out are living in the farthest parts of heaven, I will get them from there, and take them back to the place marked out by me for the resting-place of my name.

Then the king said to me, What is your desire? So I made prayer to the God of heaven.

And a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's park, so that he may give me wood to make boards for the doors of the tower of the house, and for the wall of the town, and for the house which is to be mine. And the king gave me this, for the hand of my God was on me.

And in the night I got up, taking with me a small band of men; I said nothing to any man of what God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem: and I had no beast with me but the one on which I was seated.

Then I went on to the door of the fountain and to the king's pool: but there was no room for my beast to get through.

Then I said to them, You see what a bad condition we are in; how Jerusalem is a waste, and its doorways burned with fire: come, let us get to work, building up the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer be put to shame.

Then I gave them an account of how the hand of my God was on me, helping me; and of the king's words which he had said to me. And they said, Let us get to work on the building. So they made their hands strong for the good work.

Then answering them I said, The God of heaven, he will be our help; so we his servants will go on with our building: but you have no part or right or any name in Jerusalem.

Then Eliashib, the chief priest, got up with his brothers the priests, and took in hand the building of the sheep doorway; they made it holy and put its doors in position; as far as the tower of Hammeah they made it holy, even to the tower of Hananel.

By their side Meremoth, the son of Uriah, the son of Hakkoz, was making good the walls. Then Meshullam, the son of Berechiah, the son of Meshezabel; and by him, Zadok, the son of Baana.

Joiada, the son of Paseah, and Meshullam, the son of Besodeiah, made good the old doorway; they put its boards in place and put up its doors, with their locks and rods.

And Malchijah, the son of Rechab, the ruler of the division of Beth-haccherem, made good the doorway of the waste, building it up and putting up its doors, with their locks and rods.

And Shallun, the son of Col-hozeh, the ruler of the division of Mizpah, made good the doorway of the fountain, building it up and covering it and putting up its doors, with their locks and rods, with the wall of the pool of Shelah by the king's garden, as far as the steps which go down from the town of David.

And by his side was working Ezer, the son of Jeshua, the ruler of Mizpah, making good another part opposite the way up to the store of arms at the turning of the wall.

After them came Benjamin and Hasshub, opposite their house. After them Azariah, the son of Maaseiah, the son of Ananiah, made good the wall by the house where he himself was living.

Palal, the son of Uzai, made good the wall opposite the angle and the tower which comes out from the higher part of the king's house, by the open space of the watch. After him was Pedaiah, the son of Parosh.

After him the Tekoites were making good another part, opposite the great tower which comes out, and up to the wall of the Ophel.

After him Hananiah, the son of Shelemiah, and Hanun, the sixth son of Zalaph, were making good another part. After him Meshullam, the son of Berechiah, made good the wall opposite his room.

After him Malchijah, one of the gold-workers to the Nethinim and the traders, made good the wall opposite the doorway of Hammiphkad and as far as the way up to the angle.

And between the way up to the angle and the sheep door, the gold-workers and the traders made good the wall.

And in the hearing of his countrymen and the army of Samaria he said, What are these feeble Jews doing? will they make themselves strong? will they make offerings? will they get the work done in a day? will they make the stones which have been burned come again out of the dust?

Give ear, O our God, for we are looked down on: let their words of shame be turned back on themselves, and let them be given up to wasting in a land where they are prisoners:

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;

But we made our prayer to God, and had men on watch against them day and night because of them.

And after looking, I got up and said to the great ones and to the chiefs and to the rest of the people, Have no fear of them: keep in mind the Lord who is great and greatly to be feared, and take up arms for your brothers, your sons, and your daughters, your wives and your houses.

And when it came to the ears of those who were against us, that we had knowledge of their designs and that God had made their purpose come to nothing, we all went back to the wall, everyone to his work

Wherever you may be when the horn is sounded, come here to us; our God will be fighting for us.

For there were some who said, We, our sons and our daughters, are a great number: let us get grain, so that we may have food for our needs.

And there were some who said, We are giving our fields and our vine-gardens and our houses for debt: let us get grain because we are in need.

And there were others who said, We have given up our fields and our vine-gardens to get money for the king's taxes.

And after turning it over in my mind, I made a protest to the chiefs and the rulers, and said to them, Every one of you is taking interest from his countryman. And I got together a great meeting of protest.

And I said, What you are doing is not good: is it not the more necessary for you to go in the fear of our God, because of the shame which the nations may put on us?

And shaking out the folds of my robe, I said, So may God send out from his house and his work every man who does not keep this agreement; even so let him be sent out and made as nothing. And all the meeting of the people said, So be it, and gave praise to the Lord. And the people did as they had said.

But earlier rulers who were before me made the people responsible for their upkeep, and took from them bread and wine at the rate of forty shekels of silver; and even their servants were lords over the people: but I did not do so, because of the fear of God.

And I kept on with the work of this wall, and we got no land for ourselves: and all my servants were helping with the work.

Keep in mind, O my God, for my good, all I have done for this people.

For they were hoping to put fear in us, saying, Their hands will become feeble and give up the work so that it may not get done. But now, O God, make my hands strong.

And I went to the house of Shemaiah, the son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut up; and he said, Let us have a meeting in the house of God, inside the Temple, and let the doors be shut: for they will come to put you to death; truly, in the night they will come to put you to death.

Then it became clear to me that God had not sent him: he had given this word of a prophet against me himself: and Tobiah and Sanballat had given him money to do so.

Keep in mind, O my God, Tobiah and Sanballat and what they did, and Noadiah, the woman prophet, and the rest of the prophets whose purpose was to put fear into me.

And when our haters had news of this, all the nations round about us were full of fear and were greatly shamed, for they saw that this work had been done by our God.

And they said much before me of the good he had done, and gave him accounts of my words. And Tobiah sent letters with the purpose of causing me fear.

I made my brother Hanani, and Hananiah, the ruler of the tower, responsible for the government of Jerusalem: for he was a man of good faith, fearing God more than most.

And my God put it into my heart to get together the rulers and the chiefs and the people so that they might be listed by families. And I came across a record of the names of those who came up at the first, and in it I saw these words:

And Ezra took the book, opening it before the eyes of all the people (for he was higher than the people); and when it was open, all the people got to their feet:

And Ezra gave praise to the Lord, the great God. And all the people in answer said, So be it, so be it; lifting up their hands; and with bent heads they gave worship to the Lord, going down on their faces to the earth.

And they gave out the words of the book the law of God, clearly, and gave the sense of it, so that their minds were able to take it in.

And Nehemiah, who was the Tirshatha, and Ezra, the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were the teachers of the people, said to all the people, This day is holy to the Lord your God; let there be no sorrow or weeping; for all the people were weeping on hearing the words of the law.

So the Levites made all the people quiet, saying, Be quiet, for the day is holy; and do not give way to grief.

And that they were to give out an order, and make it public in all their towns and in Jerusalem, saying, Go out to the mountain and get olive branches and branches of field olives and of myrtle, and palm branches and branches of thick trees, to make tents, as it says in the book.

And the people went out and got them and made themselves tents, every one on the roof of his house, and in the open spaces and in the open squares of the house of God, and in the wide place of the water-doorway, and the wide place of the doorway of Ephraim.

And day by day, from the first day till the last, he was reading from the book of the law of God. And they kept the feast for seven days: and on the eighth day there was a holy meeting, as it is ordered in the law.

And for a fourth part of the day, upright in their places, they were reading from the book of the law of their God; and for a fourth part of the day they were requesting forgiveness and worshipping the Lord their God.

Then Jeshua, and Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani took their places on the steps of the Levites, crying in a loud voice to the Lord their God.

Then the Levites, Jeshua, and Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah said, Get up and give praise to the Lord your God for ever and ever. Praise be to your great name which is lifted up high over all blessing and praise.

You are the Lord, the God, who took Abram and made him yours, guiding him from Ur of the Chaldees, and gave him the name of Abraham;

And you did signs and wonders on Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land; for you saw how cruel they were to them. So you got yourself a name as it is today.

And you came down on Mount Sinai, and your voice came to them from heaven, giving them right decisions and true laws, good rules and orders:

And would not do them, and gave no thought to the wonders you had done among them; but made their necks stiff, and turning away from you, made a captain over themselves to take them back to their prison in Egypt: but you are a God of forgiveness, full of grace and pity, slow to wrath and great in mercy, and you did not give them up.

Even when they had made for themselves an ox of metal, and said, This is your God who took you up out of Egypt, and had done so much to make you angry;

And you gave your good spirit to be their teacher, and did not keep back your manna from their mouths, and gave them water when they had need of it.

Truly, for forty years you were their support in the waste land, and they were in need of nothing; their clothing did not get old or their feet become tired.

And they took walled towns and a fat land, and became the owners of houses full of all good things, water-holes cut in the rock, vine-gardens and olive-gardens and a wealth of fruit-trees: so they had food enough and became fat, and had joy in the good you gave them.

Even then, in your great mercy, you did not put an end to them completely, or give them up; for you are a God of grace and mercy.

And now, our God, the great, the strong, the God who is to be feared, who keeps faith and mercy, let not all this trouble seem small to you, which has come on us, and on our kings and our rulers and on our priests and our prophets and our fathers and on all your people from the time of the kings of Assyria till this day.

For they have not been your servants in their kingdom, and in all the good things you gave them, and in the great and fat land you gave them, and they have not been turned away from their evil-doing.

Now, today, we are servants, and as for the land which you gave to our fathers, so that the produce of it and the good might be theirs, see, we are servants in it:

And because of all this we are making an agreement in good faith, and putting it in writing; and our rulers, our Levites, and our priests are putting their names to it.

And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the door-keepers, the music-makers, the Nethinim, and all those who had made themselves separate from the peoples of the lands, to keep the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone who had knowledge and wisdom;

They were united with their brothers, their rulers, and put themselves under a curse and an oath, to keep their steps in the way of God's law, which was given by Moses, the servant of God, and to keep and do all the orders of the Lord, our Lord, and his decisions and his rules;

And we made rules for ourselves, taxing ourselves a third of a shekel every year for the upkeep of the house of our God;

For the holy bread, and for the regular meal offering and the regular burned offering on the Sabbaths and at the new moon and the fixed feasts, and for the sin-offerings to take away the sin of Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God.

And we, the priests and the Levites and the people, made selection, by the decision of the Lord, of those who were to take the wood offering into the house of God, by families at the regular times, year by year, to be burned on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is recorded in the law;

As well as the first of our sons and of our cattle, as it is recorded in the law, and the first lambs of our herds and of our flocks, which are to be taken to the house of our God, to the priests who are servants in the house of our God:

And that we would take the first of our rough meal, and our lifted offerings, and the fruit of every sort of tree, and wine and oil, to the priests, to the rooms of the house of our God; and the tenth of the produce of our land to the Levites; for they, the Levites, take a tenth in all the towns of our ploughed land.

And the priest, the son of Aaron, is to be with the Levites, when the Levites take the tenths: and the Levites are to take a tenth of the tenths into the house of our God, to the rooms, into the store-house;

For the children of Israel and the children of Levi are to take the lifted offering of the grain and wine and oil into the rooms where the vessels of the holy place are, together with the priests and the door-keepers and the makers of music: and we will not give up caring for the house of our God.

All the sons of Perez living in Jerusalem were four hundred and sixty-eight men of good position.

Seraiah, the son of Hilkiah, the son of Meshullam, the son of Zadok, the son of Meraioth, the son of Ahitub, the ruler of the house of God,

And Shabbethai and Jozabad, of the chiefs of the Levites, who were responsible for the outside business of the house of God;

And the overseer of the Levites at Jerusalem was Uzzi, the son of Bani, the son of Hashabiah, the son of Mattaniah, the son of Mica, of the sons of Asaph, the music-makers, who was over the business of the house of God.

And the chiefs of the Levites: Hashabiah, Sherebiah, and Jeshua, the son of Kadmiel, with their brothers opposite them, to give blessing and praise as ordered by David, the man of God, watch against watch.

And his brothers, Shemaiah, and Azarel, Milalai, Gilalai, Maai, Nethanel and Judah, Hanani, with the music-instruments of David, the man of God; and Ezra the scribe was at their head;

So the two bands of those who gave praise took up their positions in the house of God, and I and half of the chiefs with me:

And on that day they made great offerings and were glad; for God had made them glad with great joy; and the women and the children were glad with them: so that the joy of Jerusalem came to the ears of those who were far off.

And they kept the watch of their God, and were responsible for making things clean, and so did the music-makers and the door-keepers, as it was ordered by David and Solomon his son.

For in the days of David and Asaph in the past, there was a master of the music, and songs of blessing and praise to God.

On that day there was a reading from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people; and they saw that it said in the book that no Ammonite or Moabite might ever come into the meeting of God;

Because they did not give the children of Israel bread and water when they came to them, but got Balaam to put a curse on them: though the curse was turned into a blessing by our God.

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

But all this time I was not at Jerusalem: for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I went to the king; and after some days, I got the king to let me go,

And I came to Jerusalem; and it was clear to me what evil Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in making ready for him a room in the buildings of the house of God.

Then I gave orders, and they made the rooms clean: and I put back in them the vessels of the house of God, with the meal offerings and the perfume.

Then I made protests to the chiefs, and said, Why has the house of God been given up? And I got them together and put them in their places.

Keep me in mind, O my God, in connection with this, and do not let the good which I have done for the house of my God and its worship go from your memory completely.

Did not your fathers do the same, and did not our God send all this evil on us and on this town? but you are causing more wrath to come on Israel by not keeping the Sabbath holy.

And I gave the Levites orders to make themselves clean and come and keep the doors and make the Sabbath holy. Keep this in mind to my credit, O my God, and have mercy on me, for great is your mercy.