3. When the people of Israel heard this law read, they excluded all foreigners from the community.
4. The priest Eliashib, who was in charge of the temple storerooms, had for a long time been on good terms with Tobiah.
5. He allowed Tobiah to use a large room that was intended only for storing offerings of corn and incense, the equipment used in the Temple, the offerings for the priests, and the tithes of corn, wine, and olive oil given to the Levites, to the temple musicians, and to the temple guards.
6. While this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, because in the 32nd year that Artaxerxes was king of Babylon I had gone back to report to him. After some time I received his permission
7. and returned to Jerusalem. There I was shocked to find that Eliashib had allowed Tobiah to use a room in the Temple.
8. I was furious and threw out all Tobiah's belongings.
9. I gave orders for the rooms to be ritually purified and for the temple equipment, grain offerings, and incense to be put back.
10. I also learnt that the temple musicians and other Levites had left Jerusalem and gone back to their farms, because the people had not been giving them enough to live on.
11. I reprimanded the officials for letting the Temple be neglected. And I brought the Levites and musicians back to the Temple and put them to work again.
12. Then all the people of Israel again started bringing to the temple storerooms their tithes of corn, wine, and olive oil.
13. I put the following men in charge of the storerooms: Shelemiah, a priest; Zadok, a scholar of the Law; and Pedaiah, a Levite. Hanan, the son of Zaccur and grandson of Mattaniah, was to be their assistant. I knew I could trust these men to be honest in distributing the supplies to their fellow-workers.
14. Remember, my God, all these things that I have done for your Temple and its worship.
15. At that time I saw people in Judah pressing juice from grapes on the Sabbath. Others were loading corn, wine, grapes, figs, and other things on their donkeys and taking them into Jerusalem; I warned them not to sell anything on the Sabbath.
16. Some people from the city of Tyre were living in Jerusalem, and they brought fish and all kinds of goods into the city to sell to our people on the Sabbath.