4The enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard about what the people who had returned from Babylonia were doing. They heard that they were building a temple to honor the Lord. He is the God of Israel. ²The enemies came to Zerubbabel. The family leaders of Israel were with him. The enemies said, “We want to help you build. We’re just like you. We worship your God. We offer sacrifices to him. We’ve been doing that ever since the time of Esarhaddon. He was king of Assyria. He brought our people here.”

³Zerubbabel and Jeshua answered them. So did the rest of the family leaders of Israel. They said, “You can’t help us build a temple to honor our God. You aren’t part of us. We’ll build it ourselves. We’ll do it to honor the Lord. He is the God of Israel. Cyrus, the king of Persia, commanded us to build it.”

⁴Then the nations that were around Judah tried to make its people lose hope. They wanted to make them afraid to go on building. ⁵So they hired advisers to work against them. They wanted their plans to fail. They did it during the whole time Cyrus was king of Persia. They kept doing it until Darius became king.

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