1 The autobiography of Nehemiah, the son of Hecaliah:

In December of the twentieth year of the reign of King Artaxerxes of Persia,^[a] when I was at the palace at Shushan, ² one of my fellow Jews named Hanani came to visit me with some men who had arrived from Judah. I took the opportunity to inquire about how things were going in Jerusalem.

“How are they getting along—,” I asked, “the Jews who returned to Jerusalem from their exile here?”