¹⁷ Then I said to them, “You can see the trouble we have here: Jerusalem is a pile of ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let’s rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. Then we will not be ashamed anymore.”

¹⁸ I also told them that my God had been kind to me. I told them what the king had said to me. Then they answered, “Let’s start to work, now!” So we began this good work. ¹⁹ But Sanballat from Horon, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard that we were building again. They made fun of us in a very ugly way. They said, “What are you doing? Are you turning against the king?”