let Your ear now be open, and Your eyes open, so that You may hear the prayer of Your servant, which I pray before You now, day and night, for the sons of Israel Your servants, and confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both I and my father's house have sinned.

We have acted very wickedly against You, and have not kept the commandments nor the statutes nor the judgments which You commanded Your servant Moses.

I pray You, remember the Word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, If you sin, I will scatter you among the nations,

O Jehovah, I pray You, let now Your ear be open to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who desire to fear Your name. And I pray You, bless Your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. (For I was the king's cupbearer.)

and I said to the king, If it please the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I pray that you would send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, so that I may build it.

And Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard. And it grieved them very much that there had come a man to seek the good of the sons of Israel.

But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard, they laughed us to scorn, and despised us. And they said, What is this that you do? Will you rebel against the king?

Also at the same time I said to the people, Let everyone with his servant stay inside Jerusalem, so that in the night they may be a guard to us, and labor in the day.

Then Sanballat sent his servant to me in the same way the fifth time with an open letter in his hand, in which was written,

And You made known to them Your holy sabbath, and commanded them commandments, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses Your servant.

were holding fast to their brothers, their honored ones. And they entered into a curse and into an oath, to walk in God's Law which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to be careful to do all the commandments of Jehovah our Lord, and His judgments and His statutes.