Ezra 4:22-24

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

²²Be sure that you do this. Why should damage grow, to the hurt of the kings?

²³When the copy of King Artaxerxes’ letter was read before Rehum, Shimshai the scribe, and their companions, they went up in haste to Jerusalem to the Jews and by force and power made them cease.

²⁴Then the ^[a]work on the house of God in Jerusalem stopped. It stopped until the second year of Darius [I] 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). Here in Ezra 4:24 Ezra reverts back to the time of Darius I (522-486) 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).