Further Opposition to the Rebuilding

6 When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah,^(A) Geshem^(B) the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it—though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates— ² Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages^[a] on the plain of Ono.^(C)”

But they were scheming to harm me; ³ so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” ⁴ Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.

⁵ Then, the fifth time, Sanballat^(D) sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter ⁶ in which was written:

⁸ I sent him this reply: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”

⁹ They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.”

But I prayed, “Now strengthen my hands.”

¹⁰ One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple^(F), and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you.”

¹¹ But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” ¹² I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me^(G) because Tobiah and Sanballat^(H) had hired him. ¹³ He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.^(I)

¹⁴ Remember^(J) Tobiah and Sanballat,^(K) my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophet^(L) Noadiah and how she and the rest of the prophets^(M) have been trying to intimidate me. ¹⁵ So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days.

Opposition to the Completed Wall

¹⁶ When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.

²⁸ All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹ They got up, drove him out of the town,^(A) and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. ³⁰ But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.^(B)

⁴⁷ Every day he was teaching at the temple.^(A) But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him.^{(B) 48} Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.

²⁸ Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts,^(A) cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from.^(B) I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true.^(C) You do not know him, ²⁹ but I know him^(D) because I am from him and he sent me.”^(E)

³⁰ At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him,^(F) because his hour had not yet come.^(G)