¹⁹ I asked the angel who spoke with me, “What are those?” And he answered me, “Those are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.”

¹⁴ “For thus says the Lord of hosts: Just as I purposed to bring disaster upon you when your ancestors provoked me to wrath, and I did not relent, says the Lord of hosts,^(A)

² Then I asked, “Where are you going?” He answered me, “To measure Jerusalem, to see how wide and how long it is.”^(A)

²¹ And I asked, “What are they coming to do?” He answered, “Those are the horns that scattered Judah, so that no head could be raised, but these have come to terrify them, to strike down the horns of the nations that lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter its people.”^[a](A)

⁹ Then I said, “What are these, my lord?” The angel who spoke with me said to me, “I will show you what they are.”^(A)

¹⁷ Israel is a hunted sheep driven away by lions. First the king of Assyria devoured it, and now at the end King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon has gnawed its bones.^{(A) 18} Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to punish the king of Babylon and his land as I punished the king of Assyria.

⁴ Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build,^(A)

Resistance to Rebuilding the Temple

4 When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel,^(A)

⁷ And in the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam and Mithredath and Tabeel and the rest of their associates wrote to King Artaxerxes of Persia; the letter was written in Aramaic and translated.^[a](A)

¹³ Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” ¹⁴ I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.^(A)