I got up at night and took a few men with me. I didn’t tell anyone what my God had laid on my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the one I was riding.

I accused them, "To the best of our ability, we've been buying back our fellow Jews who had been sold to foreigners. Even now you're selling your fellow countrymen, only for them to be sold back to us!" They kept quiet and never spoke a word.

Then I sent to him, saying, No such things as you say are being done, they are only a fiction you have made up yourself.

But I said, “Should a man like me flee [in fear and hide]? Should someone like me enter the temple [for sanctuary] to save his life? I will not go.”

Now the town was wide and great: but the people in it were only a small number, and the houses had not been put up.

You are the Lord, even you only; you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their armies, the earth and all things in it, the seas and everything in them; and you keep them from destruction: and the armies of heaven are your worshippers.

While all this was happening, I was not in Jerusalem, because I had returned to King Artaxerxes of Babylon in the thirty-second year of his reign. It was only later that I asked the king for a leave of absence

Half of their children spoke Ashdodite and could not speak Judean, but [only] the tongues of other nations.