7. And the rumor is that you have chosen prophets to announce this about you in Jerusalem: ‘There is a king in Judah!’ “Now I warn you, Nehemiah, King Artaxerxes will hear about this. So come, let’s meet and talk about this together.”
8. So I sent this answer back to Sanballat: “Nothing you are saying is happening. You are just making all that up in your own head.”
9. Our enemies were only trying to make us afraid. They are thinking to themselves, “The Jews will be afraid and too weak to keep on working. Then the wall will not be finished.” But I prayed, “God, make me strong.”
10. One day I went to the house of a man named Shemaiah son of Delaiah. Delaiah was the son of Mehetabel. Shemaiah had to stay in his house. He said, “Nehemiah, let’s meet in God’s Temple. Let’s go inside the Holy Place and lock the doors. Men are coming to kill you. Tonight they are coming to kill you.”
11. But I said to Shemaiah, “Should a man like me run away? You know that an ordinary man like me cannot go into the Holy Place without being put to death. I will not go!”
12. I knew that God had not sent Shemaiah. I knew that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had paid him to do that.
13. They hired Shemaiah to scare me and make me sin by going into that part of the Temple. They were planning those bad things against me so that they could shame me.
14. My God, please remember Tobiah and Sanballat and the bad things they have done. Also remember the woman prophet Noadiah and the other prophets who have been trying to scare me.
15. So the wall of Jerusalem was completed on the 25th day of the month of Elul. It had taken 52 days to finish building the wall.
16. Then all our enemies heard that we had completed the wall, and all the nations around us saw that it was finished. So they lost their courage, because they understood that this work had been done with the help of our God.