11. Then asked we these elders, saying, By whose commandment build you⌃ this house, and lay the foundations of these works?
12. Therefore, to the intent that we might give knowledge to you by writing who were the chief doers, we questioned them, and we required of them the names in writing of their principal men.
13. So they gave us this answer, We are the servants of the Lord which made heaven and earth.
14. And as for this house, it was builded many years ago by a king of Israel great and strong, and was finished.
15. But when our fathers sinned against the Lord of Israel which is in heaven, and provoked him to wrath, he gave them over into the hands of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, king of the Chaldeans;
16. and they pulled down the house, and burned it, and carried away the people captives to Babylon.
17. But in the first year that Cyrus reigned over the country of Babylon, king Cyrus wrote to build up this house.
18. And the holy vessels of gold and of silver, that Nabuchodonosor had carried away out of the house at Jerusalem, and had set up in his own temple, those Cyrus the king brought forth again out of the temple in Babylonia, and they were delivered to Zorobabel and to Sanabassarus the governor,