Ezra 4:3-5

Contemporary English Version

³ But Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the family leaders answered, “You cannot take part in building a temple for the Lord our God! We will build it ourselves, just as King Cyrus of Persia commanded us.”

⁴ Then the neighboring people began to do everything possible to frighten the Jews^[a] and to make them stop building. ⁵ During the time that Cyrus was king and even until Darius^[b] became king, they kept bribing government officials to slow down the work.