1In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of Yahweh from the mouth of Jeremiah, Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, and he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also in writing, saying:
2“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: ‘Yahweh, the God of the heavens, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he himself has appointed me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
3Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel — he is the God who is in Jerusalem.
4And everyone who remains, from every place where he sojourns, let the men of his place assist him with silver and with gold, with goods and with livestock, along with the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.’”
5Then the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, arose — everyone whose spirit God had stirred up — to go up to build the house of Yahweh that is in Jerusalem.
6And all those around them strengthened their hands with objects of silver, with gold, with goods and with livestock and with precious things, besides all that was freely offered.
7And King Cyrus brought out the vessels of the house of Yahweh, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought out from Jerusalem and had put in the house of his gods.
8And Cyrus king of Persia brought them out by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and he counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah.
9and this was their number: thirty gold basins, a thousand silver basins, twenty-nine knives,
10thirty gold bowls, four hundred and ten silver bowls of a second kind, and a thousand other vessels.
11All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand four hundred. Sheshbazzar brought all of them up when the exiles were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem.
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