¹¹ O Lord, I pray, please ^(A)let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who ^(B)desire to fear Your name; and let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”

For I was the king’s ^(C)cupbearer.

⁶ please let Your ear be attentive and ^(A)Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and ^(B)confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father’s house and I have sinned.

⁸ and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest, that he must give me timber to make beams for the gates of the ^[a]citadel which pertains ^(A)to the ^[b]temple, for the city wall, and for the house that I will occupy.” And the king granted them to me ^(B)according to the good hand of my God upon me.

Nehemiah Sent to Judah

2 And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of ^(A)King ^[a]Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that ^(B)I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before.

Prayer Requested

^18 (A)Pray for us; for we are confident that we have ^(B)a good conscience, in all things desiring to live honorably.

The Lord Considers the Heart

⁶ this Ezra came up from Babylon; and he was ^(A)a skilled scribe in the Law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given. The king granted him all his request, ^(B)according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him.

^27 (A)Blessed^[a] be the Lord God of our fathers, ^(B)who has put such a thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem, ²⁸ and ^(C)has extended mercy to me before the king and his counselors, and before all the king’s mighty princes.