9. Therefore, we questioned those elders, and we spoke to them in this way: 'Who has given authority to you, so that you would build this house and repair these walls?'
10. But we also required of them their names, so that we might report to you. And we have written down the names of their men, those who are leaders among them.
11. Then they responded a word to us in this manner, saying: 'We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth. And we are building the temple that was constructed these many years before, and which a great king of Israel had built and constructed.
12. But afterward, our fathers had provoked the God of heaven to wrath, so he delivered them into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, the Chaldean. And he destroyed this house, and he transferred its people to Babylon.
13. Then, in the first year of Cyrus, the king of Babylon, king Cyrus issued a decree, so that this house of God would be built.