Then all of Judah brought the tithe of the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil to the storerooms.

“You are the LORD God who chose Abram and brought him forth from Ur of the Chaldeans. You changed his name to Abraham.

You multiplied their descendants like the stars of the sky. You brought them to the land you had told their ancestors to enter in order to possess.

even when they made a cast image of a calf for themselves and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up from Egypt,’ or when they committed atrocious ¹  blasphemies.

Then I gave instructions that the storerooms should be purified, and I brought back the equipment ¹  of the temple of God, along with the grain offering and the incense.

So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly which included men and women and all those able to understand what they heard. (This happened on the first day of the seventh month.)

I brought the leaders of Judah up on top of the wall, and I appointed two large choirs to give thanks. One was to proceed ¹  on the top of the wall southward toward the Dung Gate.

You provided bread from heaven for them in their time of hunger, and you brought forth water from the rock for them in their time of thirst. You told them to enter in order to possess the land that you had sworn ¹  to give them.

So the people went out and brought these things ¹  back and constructed temporary shelters for themselves, each on his roof and in his courtyard and in the courtyards of the temple ²  of God and in the plaza of the Water Gate and the plaza of the Ephraim Gate.

Then in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought to me, ¹  I took the wine and gave it to the king. Previously ²  I had not been depressed ³  in the king’s presence. ⁴ 

The people from Tyre ¹  who lived there were bringing fish and all kinds of merchandise and were selling it on the Sabbath to the people of Judah – and in Jerusalem, of all places! ² 

When the evening shadows ¹  began to fall on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered ²  the doors to be closed. I further directed that they were not to be opened until after the Sabbath. I positioned ³  some of my young men at the gates so that no load could enter on the Sabbath day.

In those days I saw people in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath, bringing in heaps of grain and loading them onto donkeys, along with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, and bringing them to Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I warned them on the day that they sold these provisions.

The singers ¹  were also assembled from the district around Jerusalem and from the settlements of the Netophathites

Isn’t this the way your ancestors ¹  acted, causing our God to bring on them and on this city all this misfortune? And now you are causing even more wrath on Israel, profaning the Sabbath like this!”

It so happened that when our adversaries heard that we were aware of these matters, ¹  God frustrated their intentions. Then all of us returned to the wall, each to his own work.

I considered these things carefully ¹  and then registered a complaint with the wealthy ²  and the officials. I said to them, “Each one of you is seizing the collateral ³  from your own countrymen!” ⁴  Because of them I called for ⁵  a great public assembly.

You are righteous with regard to all that has happened to us, for you have acted faithfully. ¹  It is we who have been in the wrong!

And now, though we share the same flesh and blood as our fellow countrymen, ¹  and our children are just like their children, ²  still we have found it necessary to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. ³  Some of our daughters have been subjected to slavery, while we are powerless to help, ⁴  since our fields and vineyards now belong to other people.” ⁵ 

I also provided for ¹  the wood offering at the appointed times and also for the first fruits. Please remember me for good, O my God.