Ezra 4:2–10

²And they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the families,^b and they said to them, “Let us build with you. Like you, we seek your God and have been sacrificing to him from the days of Esarhaddon the king of Assyria who brought us up here. ³But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of the families^c of Israel said to them, “It is not for you but for us to build a house for our God. For we ourselves alone will build it for Yahweh the God of Israel, just as Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”

⁴Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah^d and made them afraid to build ⁵and bribed officials against them to frustrate their plan for all the days of Cyrus king of Persia until the reign of Darius king of Persia.

Resistance to Rebuilding Jerusalem

⁶In the reign of Ahasuerus, at the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. ⁷And in the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of their colleagues wrote to Artaxerxes king of Persia. The letter was written in Aramaic and translated from Aramaic. ⁸Rehum the royal officer and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows ⁹(then Rehum the royal officer, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their associates, the judges, the envoys, the officials, the Persians, the Erechs, the Babylonians, the Susians (that is the Elamites) ¹⁰and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and the rest of the province Beyond the River) and now