5. And I said to [him], If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you will send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' sepulchers, that I may rebuild it.
6. The king, beside whom the queen was sitting, asked me, How long will your journey take, and when will you return? So it pleased [him] to send me; and I set him a time.
7. Also I said to the king, If it pleases the king, let letters be given me for the governors beyond the [Euphrates] River, that they may let me pass through to Judah,
8. And a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king's forest or park, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple and for the city wall and for the house that I shall occupy. And the king granted what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.
9. Then I came to the governors beyond the River and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me.
10. When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard this, it distressed them exceedingly that a man had come to inquire for and require the good and prosperity of the Israelites.
11. So I came to Jerusalem and had been there three days.
12. Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. And I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. No beast was with me except the one I rode.
13. I went out by night by the Valley Gate toward the Dragon's Well and to the Dung Gate and inspected the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire.