22. Be sure to carry out this order! Why should danger grow and threaten the king?
23. When the copy of King Artaxerxes’ letter was read before Rehum and Shimshai the scribe and their colleagues, they hurried to Jerusalem to oppose the Jews and made them stop by force of arms.
24. At that time the work on God’s house in Jerusalem stopped and was suspended until the second year of the rule of Persia’s King Darius.