And the king said to me, the queen also sitting beside him, Until when shall your journey be? And when will you return? So it pleased the king, and he sent me; and I gave him a time.
O Lord, I pray, let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant, and to the prayer of Your servants who delight to fear Your name. And, I pray, prosper Your servant today and grant him mercy before this man. For I was cupbearer to the king.
But in all this time I was not at Jerusalem. For in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes the king of Babylon, I came to the king. And after some days I asked leave from the king.
and I said to the king, If it please the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you would send me to Judah to the city of my fathers’ tombs, so that I might build it.
And from the time that I was chosen to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year even to the thirtysecond year of Artaxerxes the king, twelve years, I and my brothers did not eat the bread of the governor.
And those who come of you shall build the wastes of old; you shall rear the foundations of generations and generations; and you shall be called, One repairing the breach, one restoring paths to live in.
And they shall build old ruins; they shall raise up old desolations of former ones; and they shall restore the waste cities, ruins of generations and generations.
Know, then, and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem, to Messiah the Ruler, shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. The broad place shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of distress.