Ezra 4:1-6

Adversaries Discourage the Work

Then ^athe adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that ^bthe people of the exile were building a temple to Yahweh, the God of Israel, 2 so they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ households and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; ^aand we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of ^bEsarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here.” 3 But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers’ households of Israel said to them, “^aYou have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together build to Yahweh, the God of Israel, ^bas King Cyrus, the king of Persia has commanded us.”
4 So ^athe people of the land ¹discouraged the people of Judah and dismayed them from building, 5 and hired counselors against them to frustrate their counsel all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.
6 Now in the reign of ¹^aAhasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.