So the king said to me, "Why do you appear to be depressed when you aren't sick? What can this be other than sadness of heart?" This made me very fearful.

So I prayed to the God of heaven and I replied to the king, "If it seems good to you, and if your servant has found favor with you, would you send me to Judah, to the city where my ancestral sepulchers are located, so I can rebuild it?"

And the king said unto me, (the queen also sitting by him,) For how long shall thy journey be? and when wilt thou return? So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time.

And the prefects have not known whither I have gone, and what I am doing; and to the Jews, and to the priests, and to the freemen, and to the prefects, and to the rest of those doing the work, hitherto I have not declared it;

So I said unto them, Ye, can see the misfortune that, we, are in, how that, Jerusalem, lieth waste, and, the gates thereof, are burned with fire: Come, and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may remain, no longer, a reproach.

before his colleagues and the powerful men of Samaria, and said, “What are these pathetic Jews doing? Can they restore it by themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they ever finish it? Can they bring these burnt stones back to life from the mounds of rubble?”

And it cometh to pass, when Sanballat hath heard, and Tobiah, and the Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, that lengthening hath gone up to the walls of Jerusalem, that the breeches have begun to be stopped, then it is very displeasing to them,

Meanwhile, the people of Judah said, "The builders are tired and there's so much rubble that we can't reconstruct the wall!"

And our enemies said, “They won’t know or see anything until we’re among them and can kill them and stop the work.”

At that time, I also said to the people, “Let everyone and his servant spend the night inside Jerusalem, so that they can stand guard by night and work by day.”

Some were saying, “We, our sons, and our daughters are numerous. Let us get grain so that we can eat and live.”

There were also those saying, "We have pledged our fields and our vineyards and our houses so that we can get grain in the famine."

I said to them, "To the extent possible we have bought back our fellow Jews who had been sold to the Gentiles. But now you yourselves want to sell your own countrymen, so that we can then buy them back!" They were utterly silent, and could find nothing to say.

Moreover, from the day that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year to the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes, for twelve years, neither I nor my relatives have eaten the governor’s food allowance.

I sent messengers to them, saying, "I am doing a great work, so that I can't come down. Why should the work cease, while I leave it, and come down to you?"

But I said, "Should a man like me run away? And would a man like me go into the temple so that he can save his life? I will not go in!"

And on the second day were gathered together the chief fathers of all the people, the priests, and the Levites, to Ezra the scribe, even to gain wisdom as to the words of the law.

and by the gate of the fountain and over-against them, they have gone up by the steps of the city of David, at the going up of the wall beyond the house of David, and unto the water-gate eastward.

During all this time I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes of Babylon, I had gone back to the king. After some time I had requested leave of the king,

And then I came to learn that the food of the Levites had not been given to them, so that the Levites and the singers, the doers of the work, had gone back each to his field.