Ezra 4:22-24

Amplified Bible

²²Beware of being negligent in carrying out this matter. Why should damage increase to the detriment of the kings?”

²³Then as soon as the copy of King Artaxerxes’ document was read before Rehum and Shimshai the scribe, and their colleagues, they went up hurriedly to Jerusalem to the Jews, and made them stop [work] by force of arms.

²⁴Then the ^[a]work on the house of God in Jerusalem stopped. It was suspended until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.

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Footnotes

Ezra 4:24 The long digression in Ezra 4:6-23 describes later opposition to Jewish efforts to restore the walls and rebuild the city during the reigns of Xerxes (486-465 b.c.) and Artaxerxes I (465-424 b.c). Here in Ezra 4:24 Ezra reverts back to the time of Darius I (522-486 b.c) and the rebuilding of the temple, which ceased because of the discouragement described in Ezra 4:4, 5, resumed again (Ezra 5:2), and was completed in the sixth year of the reign of Darius I (Ezra 6:15).