5. and said to the sovereign, “If it seems good to the sovereign, and if your servant is pleasing before you, I ask that you send me to Yehuḏah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, so that I build it.”
6. And the sovereign, with the sovereigness sitting beside him, said to me, “How long would your journey take? And when do you return?” So it seemed good before the sovereign to send me. And I set him a time.
7. And I said to the sovereign, “If it seems good to the sovereign, let letters be given to me for the governors beyond the River, that they should let me to pass through till I come to Yehuḏah,
8. and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the sovereign’s forest, that he should give me timber to make beams for the gates of the palace that belongs to the House, and for the city wall, and for the house I would enter.” And the sovereign gave them to me according to the good hand of my Elohim upon me.
9. Then I came to the governors beyond the River, and gave to them the letters of the sovereign. Now the sovereign had sent commanders of the army and horsemen with me.
10. And Sanballat the Ḥoronite and Toḇiyah the Ammonite official heard of it, and to them it was evil, a great evil that a man had come to seek good for the children of Yisra’ĕl.
11. Then I came to Yerushalayim and was there three days.
12. And I rose up in the night, I and a few men with me, but informed no one what my Elohim had put in my heart to do at Yerushalayim, nor was there any beast with me, except the beast on which I rode.
13. And I went out by night through the Valley Gate to the Jackals’ Fountain and the Dung Gate, and examined the walls of Yerushalayim which were broken down and its gates which were burned with fire.