Then said the king unto me, "What, then, is thy request?" Then made I my prayer to the God of heaven,

I gat me up in the night season, and a few men with me: for I told no man what God had given me in my heart to do at Jerusalem. And there was not one beast with me, save it that I rode upon.

And the rulers knew not whither I went or what I did: for hitherto had I not told the Jews and the priests, the councilors and the rulers, and the others that laboured in the work.

But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant of the Ammonites, and Geshem the Arabian heard it, they laughed us to scorn, and despised us, and said, "What is this that ye do? Will ye fall away again from the king?"

and said before his brethren and the soldiers of Samaria, "What do these impotent Jews? Shall they be thus suffered? Shall they offer? Shall they perform it in one day? Shall they make the stones whole again that are brought to dust, and burnt?"

Look in what place now ye hear the noise of the trumpet, resort ye thither unto us. Our God shall fight for us,

And the children went in, and possessed the land, and thou subduedest before them the inhabiters of the land, even the Cananites, and gavest them into their hand, and their kings and the people of the land, that they might do with them what they would.

And what time as the book of Moses was read in the ears of the people there was found written therein, that the Ammonites and Moabites should never come into the congregation of God,

Then reproved I the rulers in Judah, and said unto them, "What evil thing is this that ye do, and break the Sabbath day?