1. Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra, the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah,
2. the son of Shallum, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahitub,
3. the son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meraioth,
4. the son of Zerahiah, the son of Uzzi, the son of Bukki,
5. the son of Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the first priest.
6. This Ezra went up from Babylon, and he was a diligent scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given; and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him.
7. And there went up some of the sons of Israel and of the priests and the Levites and the singers and the porters and the Nethinims, unto Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, the king.
8. And he came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, in the seventh year of the king.
9. For upon the first of the first month he began to go up from Babylon, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God upon him.
10. For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach in Israel his statutes and judgments.
11. Now this is the copy of the letter that the king Artaxerxes gave unto Ezra, the priest, the scribe, a scribe of the words of the commandments of the Lord and of his statutes over Israel.