21. Now, give an order for those men to stop work. The city of Jerusalem will not be rebuilt until I say so.
22. Make sure you do this, because if they continue, it will hurt the government.
23. A copy of the letter that King Artaxerxes sent was read to Rehum and Shimshai the secretary and the others. Then they quickly went to the Jewish people in Jerusalem and forced them to stop building.
24. So the work on the Temple of God in Jerusalem stopped until the second year Darius was king of Persia.