not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies waste, and the gates of it are consumed with fire? 002:004 Then the king said to me, For what do you make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. 002:005 I said to the king, If it please the king, and if your servant have found favor in your sight, that you would send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, that I may build it. 002:006 The king said to me (the queen also sitting by him), For how long shall your journey be? and when will you return? So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time. 002:007 Moreover I said to the king, If it please the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah; 002:008 and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the castle which appertains to the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. The king granted me, according to the good hand of my God on me. 002:009 Then I came to the governors beyond the River, and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent with me captains of the army and horsemen. 002:010 When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly, because a man had come to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. 002:011 So I came to Jerusalem, and was there three days. 002:012 I arose in the night, I and some few men with me; neither told I any man what my God put into my heart to do for Jerusalem; neither was there any animal with me, except the animal that I rode on. 002:013 I went out by night by the valley gate, even toward the jackal's well, and to the dung gate, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates of it were consumed with fire. 002:014 Then I went on to the spring gate and to the king's pool: but there was no place for the animal that was under me to pass. 002:015 Then went I up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall; and I turned back, and entered by the valley gate, and so returned. 002:016 The rulers didn't know where I went, or what I did; neither had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest who did the work. 002:017 Then said I to them, You see the evil case that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and the gates of it are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. 002:018 I told them of the hand of my God which was good on me, as also of the king's words that he had spoken to me. They said, Let us rise up and build.