⁵⁸ In all, the Temple servants and the descendants of Solomon’s servants numbered 392.

² The first of the exiles to return to their property in their former towns were priests, Levites, Temple servants, and other Israelites.

²¹ These were descendants of the nations whom the people of Israel had not completely destroyed.^[a] So Solomon conscripted them as slaves, and they serve as forced laborers to this day.

²⁷ But that day he made the Gibeonites the woodcutters and water carriers for the community of Israel and for the altar of the Lord—wherever the Lord would choose to build it. And that is what they do to this day.

²³ May you be cursed! From now on you will always be servants who cut wood and carry water for the house of my God.”

²¹ Let them live.” So they made them woodcutters and water carriers for the entire community, as the Israelite leaders directed.

²⁶ with the Temple servants living on the hill of Ophel, who repaired the wall as far as a point across from the Water Gate to the east and the projecting tower.

⁷ Some of the people of Israel, as well as some of the priests, Levites, singers, gatekeepers, and Temple servants, traveled up to Jerusalem with him in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes’ reign.