Ezra 4:6-8

Easy-to-Read Version

⁶These enemies even wrote letters to the king of Persia trying to stop the Jews. They wrote a letter the year that Xerxes^[a] became the king of Persia.

Enemies Against Rebuilding Jerusalem

⁷Later, when Artaxerxes became the new king of Persia, some of these men wrote another letter complaining about the Jews. The men who wrote the letter were Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the other people in their group. The letter was written in Aramaic and translated.^[b]

⁸^[c] Then Rehum the commanding officer and Shimshai the secretary wrote a letter against the people of Jerusalem. They wrote the letter to Artaxerxes the king. This is what they wrote:

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Footnotes

Ezra 4:6 Xerxes King of Persia about 485–465 B.C.
Ezra 4:7 The letter … translated Or “The letter was written in the local language, but with Aramaic characters, and then translated into Aramaic.” This would mean the scribe used the “modern” Aramaic alphabet rather than the older alphabet that was still being used in Judah.
Ezra 4:8 Here, the original language changes from Hebrew to Aramaic.