But when Sanballat the Ḥoronite heard, and Toḇiyah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Araḇ, they mocked us and despised us, and said, “What is this you are doing? Are you rebelling against the sovereign?”
But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, and took from them bread and wine, besides forty sheqels of silver. Their servants also oppressed the people, but I did not do so, because of the fear of Elohim.
“For I shall no longer spare the inhabitants of the land,” declares יהוה. “But see, I am delivering up mankind, each one into his neighbour’s hand and into the hand of his sovereign. And they shall crush the earth, but I do not deliver from their hand.”