CHAPTER 2

¹And it happened in the month of Nissan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, there was wine before him, and I bore the wine and gave it to the king, and I had not been sad in his presence. ²And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad when you are not ill? This can only be sadness of heart.” And I was very much afraid. ³And I said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why would my face not be sad when the city that is the graveyard of my fathers is in ruins and its gates consumed by fire?” ⁴And the king said to me, “For what are you asking?” And I prayed to the God of the heavens, ⁵and I said, “If it please the king and if your servant seem good before you, send me to Judah, to the city of the graves of my fathers, that I may rebuild it.” ⁶And the king said, with the consort sitting by him, “How long will your going be and when will you come back?” And it seemed good before the king, and he sent me off, and I gave him a time. ⁷And I said to the king, “If it please the king, let them give me letters to the satraps of Beyond the River that they let me cross over until I come to Judah, ⁸and a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s park, that he give me timber to roof the gates of the temple fortress and the city wall and the house to which I shall come.” And the king granted it to me, as the benign hand of my God was upon me. ⁹And I came to the satraps of Beyond the River and gave them the king’s letters. And the king had sent with me army officers and horsemen. ¹⁰And Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard, and they were very displeased that a man had come to seek good for the Israelites. ¹¹And I came to Jerusalem and was there three days. ¹²And I arose in the night, I and the few men with me, and I told no man what my God had set in my heart to do for Jerusalem, and there were no beasts with me except the beast on which I was riding. ¹³And I went out through the Gate of the Valley by night toward the Spring of the Jackals and toward the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been breached and its gates ravaged by fire. ¹⁴And I passed on to the Gate of the Spring and to the King’s Pool, and there was no room for the beast under me to pass through. ¹⁵And I went up the wadi by night and inspected the wall and came back and entered the Gate of the Valley and came back. ¹⁶And the prefects had not known where I had gone nor what I was doing, and to the Jews and to the priests and to the nobles and to the prefects and to the rest of those engaged in the task I had not told till then. ¹⁷And I said to them, “You see the trouble in which we are, that Jerusalem is in ruins and its gates are ravaged by fire. Go, and we will rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and no longer be a disgrace.” ¹⁸And I told them of the hand of God that was benign upon me, and also of the words of the king that he had said to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” And they bolstered their hands to do good. ¹⁹Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshem the Arab heard, and they mocked us and despised us and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” ²⁰And I responded to them and said, “The God of the heavens, He shall make us prosper, and we are His servants. We shall rise up and build, and you have no share or right or claim in Jerusalem.”