And on that day they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced, for God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard from far away.

hereby participate with their colleagues the town leaders ¹  and enter into a curse and an oath ²  to adhere to ³  the law of God which was given through Moses the servant of God, and to obey ⁴  carefully all the commandments of the LORD our Lord, ⁵  along with his ordinances and his statutes.

I also discovered that the grain offerings for the Levites had not been provided, and that as a result the Levites and the singers who performed this work had all gone off to their fields.

I said to the king, “If the king is so inclined, let him give me letters for the governors of Trans-Euphrates ¹  that will enable me to travel safely until I reach Judah,

all the people gathered together ¹  in the plaza which was in front of the Water Gate. They asked ²  Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the LORD had commanded Israel.

He made for himself a large storeroom where previously they had been keeping ¹  the grain offering, the incense, and the vessels, along with the tithes of the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil as commanded for the Levites, the singers, the gate keepers, and the offering for the priests.

I recognized the fact that God had not sent him, for he had spoken the prophecy against me as a hired agent of Tobiah and Sanballat. ¹ 

Then there were those who said, “We have borrowed money to pay our taxes to the king ¹  on our fields and our vineyards.

Hear, O our God, for we are despised! Return their reproach on their own head! Reduce them to plunder in a land of exile!

There were those who said, “With our sons and daughters, we are many. We must obtain ¹  grain in order to eat and stay alive.”

When the wall had been rebuilt and I had positioned the doors, and the gatekeepers, the singers, and the Levites had been appointed,

What the rest of the people gave amounted to 20,000 gold drachmas, 2,000 silver minas, and 67 priestly garments.

They discovered written in the law that the LORD had commanded through ¹  Moses that the Israelites should live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month,

Our kings, our leaders, our priests, and our ancestors have not kept your law. They have not paid attention to your commandments or your testimonies by which you have solemnly admonished them.

So I registered a complaint with the leaders, asking “Why is the temple of God neglected?” Then I gathered them and reassigned them to their positions. ¹ 

Then the king, with his consort ¹  sitting beside him, replied, “How long would your trip take, and when would you return?” Since the king was amenable to dispatching me, ²  I gave him a time.

He had been hired to scare me so that I would do this and thereby sin. They would thus bring reproach on me and I ¹  would be discredited. ² 

I said to them, “To the extent possible we have bought back our fellow Jews ¹  who had been sold to the Gentiles. But now you yourselves want to sell your own countrymen, ²  so that we can then buy them back!” They were utterly silent, and could find nothing to say.

When Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall and no breach remained in it (even though up to that time I had not positioned doors in the gates),

On that day men were appointed over the storerooms for the contributions, first fruits, and tithes, to gather into them from ¹  the fields of the cities the portions prescribed by the law for the priests and the Levites, for the people of Judah ²  took delight in the priests and Levites who were ministering. ³