Adversaries Oppose the Rebuilding

4 Now when ^(A)the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, ² they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers' houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever ^(B)since the days of ^(C)Esarhaddon king of Assyria ^(D)who brought us here.” ³ But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers' houses in Israel said to them, ^(E)“You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, ^(F)as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”

⁴ Then ^(G)the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build ⁵ and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.

⁶ And in the reign of ^(H)Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.

The Letter to King Artaxerxes

⁷ In the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam and ^(I)Mithredath and Tabeel and the rest of their associates wrote to Artaxerxes king of Persia. The letter was written ^(J)in Aramaic and translated.^{[a] 8} Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king as follows:

²⁴ Then the work on the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped, and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.