They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your mighty strength and by your powerful hand.

and then said unto the king, If, unto the king, it seemeth good, and if thy servant might find favour before thee, That thou wouldst send me unto Judah, unto the city of the sepulchres of my fathers, that I might build it.

After him repaired Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, the ruler of the half district of Beth-zur, unto the place opposite the sepulchers of David, and to the pool that was man made, and unto the house of the mighty men.

Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy grain, because of the famine.

and now, as the flesh of our brethren is our flesh, as their sons are our sons, and lo, we are subduing our sons and our daughters for servants, and there are of our daughters subdued, and our hand hath no might, and our fields and our vineyards are to others.'

I also, my brethren and my servants, we might exact usury of them, money and corn. I pray you, let us leave off this usury.

Therefore was he hired, that I should be afraid, and do so, and sin, and that they might have matter for an evil report, that they might reproach me.

And my God put into mine heart to gather together the nobles, and the rulers, and the people, that they might be reckoned by genealogy. And I found a register of the genealogy of them which came up at the first, and found written therein,

Then on the second day the heads of fathers’ households of all the people, the priests and the Levites were gathered to Ezra the scribe that they might gain insight into the words of the law.

And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land; and their persecutors thou threwest into the deeps, as a stone into the mighty waters.

but refused to hearken, neither kept in mind thy wonders which thou hadst done with them, but they hardened their neck, and appointed a head that they might return to their servitude, in their perverseness. But, thou, art a God of forgivenesses, gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness, and didst not forsake them.

So the children went in and possessed the land, and thou subduedst before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gavest them into their hands, with their kings, and the people of the land, that they might do with them as they would.

“But they became disobedient and rebelled against You,
And cast Your law behind their backs
And killed Your prophets who had admonished them
So that they might return to You,
And they committed great blasphemies.

Therefore didst thou deliver them into the hand of their adversaries, who distressed them, - and, in the time of their distress, they made outcry unto thee, and, thou, out of the heavens, didst hear, and, according to thine abounding compassions, gavest them saviors, that they might save them out of the hand of their adversaries.

And testified against them, that you might bring them again unto your law: yet they acted presumptuously, and hearkened not unto your commandments, but sinned against your judgments, (which if a man does, he shall live in them;) and turned the shoulder, and hardened their neck, and would not hear.

Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the terrible God, who keepest covenant and mercy, let not all the trouble seem little before thee, that hath come upon us, on our kings, on our princes, and on our priests, and on our prophets, and on our fathers, and on all thy people, since the time of the kings of Assyria unto this day.

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:

Holding upon their brethren, their mighty ones, and coming into a curse, and into an oath, to go in the law of God which was given by the hand of Moses the servant of God, and to watch and to do all the command of Jehovah our Lord, and his judgments and his ordinances;

Likewise we cast lots for the supply of wood among the priests, the Levites and the people so that they might bring it to the house of our God, according to our fathers’ households, at fixed times annually, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the law;

and that they might bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all the fruit of every tree to the house of the Lord annually,

And that we should bring the firstfruits of our dough, and our offerings, and the fruit of all manner of trees, of wine and of oil, unto the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and the tithes of our ground unto the Levites, that the same Levites might have the tithes in all the cities of our tillage.

All the sons of Perez who lived in Jerusalem were four hundred and sixty-eight mighty men.

And their brethren, mighty men of valour, an hundred twenty and eight: and their overseer was Zabdiel, the son of one of the great men.

And in the dedication of the wall at Jerusalem, were the Levites sought out of all their places, that they might be brought to Jerusalem, to keep the dedication and gladness, with thanksgivings, with singing, with cymbals, Psalteries, and harps.

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;

And so, when the streets of Jerusalem were getting dark before the Sabbath, I gave orders for the doors to be shut and not to be open again till after the Sabbath: and I put some of my servants by the door so that nothing might be taken in on the Sabbath day.