9. Then we questioned those elders, asking them, ‘Who gave you the authority to build this House and to complete this structure?’
10. We also asked them their names in order to inform you, so that we might write the names of the men who were in charge of them.
11. They responded to us saying, ‘We are servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we are rebuilding the House that was built many years ago. A great king of Israel built and finished it.
12. But because our fathers angered the God of heaven, He gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the Chaldean. He destroyed this House and carried the people away to Babylon.
13. ‘However, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Babylon, King Cyrus issued a decree to rebuild this House of God.
14. Even the gold and silver utensils of the House of God that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem and had carried away to the temple in Babylon—King Cyrus took those things from the temple in Babylon and gave them to a man named Sheshbazzar, whom he had appointed governor.
15. ‘Then he said to him, “Take these vessels and go and deposit them in the Temple in Jerusalem and let the House of God be built in its place!”