This part of the Chronicler's work begins, as has been said, with an edict of Cyrus permitting the Jews in Babylonia to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. There follows a list (given again in Neh. 7) of the families who availed themselves of this permission, shortly after 538 B.C. The restoration of the temple is begun, then stopped by the machinations of their enemies under Xerxes (486-465 B.C.) and Artaxerxes (465-424 B.C.), but happily completed (by the same Zerubbabel and Joshua who began it) in the sixth year of Darius (Nothus, 424-405 B.C.). "After these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes," Ezra came up from Babylonia, armed with large powers by an edict of the king, to order things according to the law of his God in the province "beyond the river" (Euphrates, Ezra 7 f.). He found things enough that needed reform; particularly the frequent intermarriages of all classes, including the clergy, with the "peoples of the land," and succeeded in inducing the Jews, in a great act of penitence, to divorce these "foreign women" (cc. 9-10). At this point the History of Nehemiah sets in abruptly in the form of personal memoirs. Nehemiah, a favourite cup-bearer of the Persian king Artaxerxes, hearing that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and the gates burned, asks permission to go thither and repair the damaged fortifications, and is sent with a commission as royal governor of the district. In spite of dangerous opposition from jealous neighbours in Samaria and elsewhere, by the utmost endeavours he accomplishes the rebuilding of the walls in a very brief space (Neh. 1-6). In all this there is not so much as a mention of Ezra, who is supposed to have been now thirteen years in Jerusalem, but in Neh. 8 he suddenly appears on the scene with his law-book. The law is read, and the people solemnly covenant by sign and seal to observe it; Nehemiah's name stands at the head of the list of signers, but otherwise he is entirely ignored (Neh. 8-10). Lists of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of other settlements, a catalogue of the priests and levites who came up under Cyrus, and a description of the dedication of the walls, in which the singers shine, fill Neh. 11-12. That the Chronicler is the author is palpable. Finally, in c. 13, Nehemiah, who had returned to court, reappears, and finds a sad state of things; a foreigner, and an Ammonite at that, lodged by the high priest in a chamber of the temple, flagrant violations of the sabbath by market men, and the old grievance of mixed marriages in full gait. Even the high priest's family was not pure: one of its scions was son-in-law to Nehemiah's arch-enemy, Sanballat of Samaria. Naturally Nehemiah expelled him.