¹⁰ Then Judah said, “The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.”

² “Thus speaks the Lord of hosts, saying: ‘This people says, “The time has not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built.” ’ ”

¹⁸ “Son of man, ^(A)Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused his army to labor strenuously against Tyre; every head was made ^(B)bald, and every shoulder rubbed raw; yet neither he nor his army received wages from Tyre, for the labor which they expended on it.

Faith in the Lord’s Righteousness

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

¹⁸ And he made ^(A)seventy thousand of them bearers of burdens, eighty thousand stonecutters in the mountain, and three thousand six hundred overseers to make the people work.

⁹ For ^(A)when they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, so that they did not go into the land which the Lord had given them.

^31 (A)But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.”