Today is the ninth day of August. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today as we gather again. And here we are closing a week down.

Bringing to its conclusion.

And I don't know how many weeks we are in, but however many weeks we are in, this is where we are.

I'm glad that we can do this together and release another week and look forward to the new one.

So we are working our way through the book of Ezra at this point.

And kind of the end of official exile, although things are never going to be the same

for the children of Israel.

Ezra chapter 8, verse 21 through 9, verse 15.

And there by the Ahavok now, I gave orders for all of us to fast and humble ourselves before our God.

We prayed that he would give us a safe journey and protect us, our children, and our goods as we

traveled. For I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to

accompany us and protect us from enemies along the way. After all, we had told the king,

our God's hand of protection is on all who worship him, but his fear's anger rages against

those who abandon him.

So he fasted and earnestly prayed that our God would take care of us.

And he heard our prayer.

I appointed twelve leaders of the priests,

Sheribaya, Asiabaya, and ten other priests to be in charge of transporting the silver, the gold, the gold bowls, and the other items that the king, his counsel, his officials, and all the people of Israel had presented for the temple of God.

I weighed the treasure as I gave it to them and found the totals to be as follows.

24 tons of silver, 7,500 pounds of silver articles, 7,500 pounds of gold,

20 gold bowls, equal in value to 1,000 gold coins, two fine articles of polished bronze as precious as gold.

And I said to these priests,

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