1 Esdras 2:23-25

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

²³ and that the Jews were rebels and kept setting up blockades in it from of old. That is why this city was laid waste. ²⁴ Therefore we now make known to you, O lord and king, that if this city is built and its walls finished, you will no longer have access to Coelesyria and Phoenicia.’

²⁵ Then the king, in reply to the recorder Rehum, Beltethmus, the scribe Shimshai, and the others associated with them and living in Samaria and Syria and Phoenicia, wrote as follows: