Shaphan carried the book to the king, and moreover brought back word to the king, saying, "All that was committed to your servants, they are doing.

"Go inquire of the LORD for me, and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that is found; for great is the wrath of the LORD that is poured out on us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the LORD, to do according to all that is written in this book."

"Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will bring disaster on this place, and on its inhabitants, even all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah.

Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and singing women spoke of Josiah in their lamentations to this day; and they made them an ordinance in Israel: and behold, they are written in the lamentations.

and his acts, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.

Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found in him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah: and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his place.

Now these are the children of the province, who went up out of the captivity of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away to Babylon, and who returned to Jerusalem and Judah, everyone to his city;

Be it known to the king, that the Jews who came up from you have come to us to Jerusalem; they are building the rebellious and the bad city, and have finished the walls, and repaired the foundations.

Then they asked them, "What are the names of the men were who are constructing this building?

Thus they returned us answer, saying, "We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and are building the house that was built these many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and finished.

Now therefore, Tattenai, governor beyond the River, Shetharbozenai, and your companions the Apharsachites, who are beyond the River, you must stay far from there.

That which they have need of, both young bulls, and rams, and lambs, for burnt offerings to the God of heaven; also wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the word of the priests who are at Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail;

I make a decree, that all those of the people of Israel, and their priests and the Levites, in my realm, who are minded of their own free will to go to Jerusalem, go with you.

Because you are sent of the king and his seven counselors, to inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of your God which is in your hand,

The vessels that are given to you for the service of the house of your God, deliver before the God of Jerusalem.

I, even I Artaxerxes the king, do make a decree to all the treasurers who are beyond the River, that whatever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you, it be done with all diligence,

You, Ezra, after the wisdom of your God who is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges, who may judge all the people who are beyond the River, all such as know the laws of your God; and teach him who doesn't know them.

Now these are the heads of their ancestral houses, and this is the genealogy of those who went up with me from Babylon, in the reign of Artaxerxes the king:

Of the sons of Adonikam, who were the last; and these are their names: Eliphelet, Jeuel, and Shemaiah; and with them sixty males.

I said to them, "You are holy to the LORD, and the vessels are holy; and the silver and the gold are a freewill offering to the LORD, the God of your fathers.

For we are bondservants; yet our God has not forsaken us in our bondage, but has extended loving kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem.

The LORD, the God of Israel, you are righteous; for we are left a remnant that has escaped, as it is this day. Behold, we are before you in our guiltiness; for none can stand before you because of this."

Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God. Let it be done according to the law.

Arise; for the matter belongs to you, and we are with you. Be courageous, and do it."

But the people are many, and it is a time of much rain, and we are not able to stand outside; neither is this a work of one day or two; for we have greatly transgressed in this matter.

Let now our leaders represent the whole assembly, and let all those who are in our cities who have married foreign women come at appointed times, and with them the elders of every city, and its judges, until the fierce wrath of our God be turned from us, until this matter is resolved."

They said to me, "The remnant who are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and its gates are burned with fire."

"Now these are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power, and by your strong hand.

The king said to me, "Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing else but sorrow of heart." Then I was very much afraid.

Then I said to them, "You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come, let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we won't be disgraced."

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?"

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?"

Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, "What they are building, if a fox climbed up it, he would break down their stone wall."

"Hear, our God; for we are despised; and turn back their reproach on their own head, give them up for a spoil in a land of captivity;

Judah said, "The strength of the bearers of burdens is fading, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall."

I said to the nobles, and to the rulers and to the rest of the people, "The work is great and large, and we are separated on the wall, one far from another.

For there were that said, "We, our sons and our daughters, are many. Let us get grain, that we may eat and live."

Some also there were that said, "We are mortgaging our fields, and our vineyards, and our houses. Let us get grain, because of the famine."

Please restore to them, even this day, their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money, and of the grain, the new wine, and the oil, that you are charging them."

in which was written, "It is reported among the nations, and Gashmu says it, that you and the Jews intend to rebel. Because of that, you are building the wall. You would be their king, according to these words.

Then I sent to him, saying, "There are no such things done as you say, but you imagine them out of your own heart."

These are the children of the province, who went up out of the captivity of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and who returned to Jerusalem and to Judah, everyone to his city;

You are the LORD, even you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their army, the earth and all things that are on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve them all. The army of heaven worships you.

You are the LORD, the God who chose Abram, and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and gave him the name of Abraham,

and found his heart faithful before you, and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite, and the Girgashite, to give it to his seed, and have performed your words; for you are righteous.

and refused to obey, neither were they mindful of your wonders that you did among them, but hardened their neck, and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and did not forsake them.

"Nevertheless in your manifold mercies you did not make a full end of them, nor forsake them; for you are a gracious and merciful God.

However you are just in all that has come on us; for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly;

"Behold, we are servants this day, and as for the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its good, behold, we are servants in it.

It yields much increase to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins: also they have power over our bodies, and over our livestock, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress.

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.

Now these are the chiefs of the province who lived in Jerusalem; but in the cities of Judah everyone lived in his possession in their cities: Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the Nethinim, and the children of Solomon's servants.

These are the sons of Benjamin: Sallu the son of Meshullam, the son of Joed, the son of Pedaiah, the son of Kolaiah, the son of Maaseiah, the son of Ithiel, the son of Jeshaiah.

Now these are the priests and the Levites who went up with Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua: Seraiah, Jeremiah, Ezra,

Memucan answered before the king and the officials, "Vashti the queen has not done wrong to just the king, but also to all the officials and to all the people who are in all the provinces of the King Ahasuerus.

Haman said to King Ahasuerus, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws are different than other people's. They do not keep the king's laws. Therefore it is not for the king's profit to allow them to remain.

If it pleases the king, let it be written that they be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who are in charge of the king's business, to bring it into the king's treasuries."

"Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day. I and my maidens will also fast the same way. Then I will go in to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish."

For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondservants and bondmaids, I would have held my peace, although the adversary could not have compensated for the king's loss."

She said, "If it pleases the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right to the king, and I am pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king's provinces.

Then the king's scribes were called at that time, in the third month Sivan, on the twenty-third day of the month; and it was written according to all that Mordecai commanded to the Jews, and to the satraps, and the governors and officials of the provinces which are from India to Ethiopia, one hundred twenty-seven provinces, to every province according to its writing, and to every people in their language, and to the Jews in their writing, and in their language.

Then Esther said, "If it pleases the king, let it be granted to the Jews who are in Shushan to do tomorrow also according to this day's decree, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged on the gallows."

All the acts of his power and of his might, and the full account of the greatness of Mordecai, to which the king advanced him, aren't they written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia?

and behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young men, and they are dead. I alone have escaped to tell you."

Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest.

There the prisoners are at ease together. They do not hear the voice of the taskmaster.

The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master.

who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.

But now it is come to you, and you faint. It touches you, and you are troubled.

By the breath of God they perish. By the blast of his anger are they consumed.

The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, the teeth of the young lions, are broken.

The old lion perishes for lack of prey. The cubs of the lioness are scattered abroad.

How much more, those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth.

Between morning and evening they are destroyed. They perish forever without any regarding it.

His children are far from safety. They are crushed in the gate. Neither is there any to deliver them,

so that he sets up on high those who are low, those who mourn are exalted to safety.

For the arrows of Shaddai are within me. My spirit drinks up their poison. The terrors of God set themselves in array against me.

My soul refuses to touch them. They are as loathsome food to me.

Which are black by reason of the ice, in which the snow hides itself.

In the dry season, they vanish. When it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.

For now you are nothing. You see a terror, and are afraid.

How forcible are words of uprightness. But your reproof, what does it reprove?

Do you intend to reprove words, seeing that the speeches of one who is desperate are as wind?

"Isn't a man forced to labor on earth? Aren't his days like the days of a hired hand?

so am I made to possess months of misery, wearisome nights are appointed to me.

My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope.

I loathe my life. I do not want to live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are but a breath.

(For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow.)

So are the paths of all who forget God. The hope of the godless man shall perish,

His roots are wrapped around the rock pile. He sees the place of stones.

Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, 'What are you doing?'

"Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good,

Are your days as the days of mortals, or your years as man's years,

You renew your witnesses against me, and increase your indignation on me. Changes and warfare are with me.

Aren't my days few? Cease then. Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,

They are high as heaven. What can you do? They are deeper than Sheol. What can you know?

for you shall forget your misery. You shall remember it as waters that are passed away.

"No doubt, but you are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.