"Remember, I beg you, the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, 'If you trespass, I will scatter you abroad among the peoples;

but if you return to me, and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts were in the uttermost part of the heavens, yet will I gather them from there, and will bring them to the place that I have chosen, to cause my name to dwell there.'

The king said to me (the queen was also sitting by him), "For how long shall your journey be? And when will you return?" So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time.

But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they ridiculed us, and despised us, and said, "What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?"

Then answered I them, and said to them, "The God of heaven will prosper us. Therefore we, his servants, will arise and build; but you have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem."

He spoke before his brothers and the army of Samaria, and said, "What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, since they are burned?"

It happened that when the Jews who lived by them came, they said to us ten times from all places, "Wherever you turn, they will attack us."

Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally there to us. Our God will fight for us."

Then they said, "We will restore them, and will require nothing of them; so will we do, even as you say." Then I called the priests, and took an oath of them, that they would do according to this promise.

You have also appointed prophets to preach of you at Jerusalem, saying, 'There is a king in Judah.' Now it will be reported to the king according to these words. Come now therefore, and let us take counsel together."

For they all would have made us afraid, saying, "Their hands will be weakened from the work, that it not be done. But now, strengthen my hands."

I went to the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home; and he said, "Let us meet together in God's house, within the temple, and let us shut the doors of the temple; for they will come to kill you; yes, in the night will they come to kill you."

I said, "Should such a man as I flee? Who is there that, being such as I, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in."

and that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, "Go out to the mountain, and get olive branches, and branches of wild olive, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, as it is written."

For the children of Israel and the children of Levi shall bring the wave offering of the grain, of the new wine, and of the oil, to the rooms, where are the vessels of the sanctuary, and the priests who minister, and the gatekeepers, and the singers. We will not forsake the house of our God.

Then I testified against them, and said to them, "Why do you stay around the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you." From that time on, they did not come on the Sabbath.