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1When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple for the Lord , the God of Israel,
2they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the families. They said to them, “Let us build with you, because, like you, we seek your God, and we have been sacrificing to him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us here.”[#4:2 The translation follows the marginal Hebrew reading, which is supported by a Dead Sea Scroll and the ancient versions. The main Hebrew reading is have not been sacrificing .]
3Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of the families of Israel said to them, “We will not permit you to join us in building a house for our God, because we ourselves will build it for the Lord , the God of Israel, just as King Cyrus of Persia commanded us.”
4Then the people of the land kept discouraging the people of Judah and kept trying to make them too frightened to build.[#4:4 Literally causing the hands to droop for]
5They kept bribing officials against them to try to frustrate their plans. They did this throughout all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, until the reign of Darius king of Persia.[#4:5 Or hiring lobbyists]
6During the reign of Xerxes, at the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.[#4:6 The EHV uses the names of the Persian kings that have become the standard English names. These names derive from the Greek versions of the names rather than directly from the Hebrew or Persian forms of the names.]
7Then in Artaxerxes' days, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabe'el, and the rest of his associates wrote to King Artaxerxes of Persia. A document was written in Aramaic and translated. What follows is the Aramaic version.[#4:7 Presumably translated into Persian for the king. See verse 18.; #4:7 Ezra 4:7–6:18 is in Aramaic, as is Ezra 7:12–26. The letters are written in a kind of formal, stylized, bureaucratic Aramaic.]
8Rehum the head of the council and Shimshai the secretary wrote a letter concerning Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows:
17The king sent a reply:
23Then, when a copy of Artaxerxes' document was read in the presence of Rehum, Shimshai the secretary, and their associates, they immediately went to the Judeans in Jerusalem, and they stopped them with armed force.
24In this way, the work on the house of God in Jerusalem was stopped. Also, it had previously been stopped until the second year of the reign of King Darius of Persia.[#4:24 That is, 520 BC]