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The Book of Nehemiah 2

2 And it happened that, in the month of Nisan, in year 20 of Artaxerxes the king, wine was before his face. And I lifted the wine, and I gave it to the king, and I was not unpleasant before his face.

2 And the king said to me, “Why is your face unpleasant? Now as for you, you are not sick. This is nothing except unpleasantness of heart.” And I was extremely much afraid.

3 And I said to the king, “May the king live to eternity! Why should not my face be unpleasant, when the city, the house of the graves of my fathers, is desolate, and its gates have been consumed by fire.”

4 And the king said to me, “For what is this you are seeking?” And I prayed to the God of heaven.

5 And I said to the king, “If it is good to the king, and if your servant is good before your face, that you would send me to Judah, to the city of the graves of my fathers, and I will build it.”

6 And the king said to me, with the queen sitting beside him, “Until when will be your journey? And when will you return?” And it was good before the face of the king, and he sent me, and I gave to him a time.

7 And I said to the king, “If it is good to the king, let letters be given to me for the governors of Beyond-the-River, that they will bring me across as far as where I enter into Judah; 8 and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the forest that belongs to the king, that he will give to me timbers to lay the beams of the gates of the citadel, which is for the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house into which I will enter.”

And the king gave to me, according to the good hand of my God upon me. 9 And I came to the governors of Beyond-the-River, and I gave to them the letters of the king. And the king sent with me officers of the army and horsemen.

10 And Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah, the servant, the Ammonite, heard. And it was evil to them, a great evil, that someone had come to seek good for the sons of Israel. 11 And I came to Jerusalem, and I was there three days.

12 And I arose in the night, myself and a few men with me, and I did not tell anyone what my God had been giving to my heart to do for Jerusalem. Now there was no animal with me except the animal upon which I was riding. 13 And I went out at the gate of the valley at night, even to the face of the spring of the dragon, and to the gate of dung. And I was looking intently at the walls of Jerusalem, seeing that they were broken down, and its gates had been consumed by fire.[fn] 14 And I crossed to the gate of the spring and to the pool of the king, but there was no place for the animal under me to pass. 15 And I was going up by the wadi at night, and I was looking intently at the wall. And I turned back, and I came in at the gate of the valley, and I returned.

16 Now the prefects did not know where I had gone or what I was doing. And until this time I had not yet told the Jews, or the priests, or the nobles, or the prefects, or the rest of the doers of the work.

17 And I said to them, “You see the evil that we are in, that Jerusalem is desolate and its gates have been burned by fire. Come, and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be a reproach.” 18 And I declared to them the hand of my God, that it was good upon me, and also the words of the king that he had spoken to me.

And they said, “We will rise up and build.” And they strengthened their hands for good.

19 And Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah, the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian heard, and they mocked us, and they despised us. And they said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?”

20 And I returned them a word, and I said to them: “The God of heaven, he will cause us to succeed, and we ourselves, his servants, will rise up and build. But for you there is neither share nor right nor memorial in Jerusalem.”

they were broken down or perhaps the broken-down places (Hebrew Ketiv).

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