¹ Now while Ezra was making his prayer and his statement of wrongdoing, weeping and falling down before the house of God, a very great number of men and women and children out of Israel came together round him: for the people were weeping bitterly.

²⁰ And while I was still saying these words in prayer, and putting my sins and the sins of my people Israel before the Lord, and requesting grace from the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God;

¹³⁶ Rivers of water are flowing from my eyes, because men do not keep your law.

⁹ If evil comes on us, the sword, or punishment, or disease, or need of food, we will come to this house and to you, (for your name is in this house,) crying to you in our trouble, and you will give us salvation in answer to our cry.

³⁰ Give ear to the prayers of your servant, and the prayers of your people Israel, when they make their prayers, turning to this place; give ear in heaven your living-place, and hearing, have mercy.

⁴¹ And when he got near and saw the town, he was overcome with weeping for it,

² That I am full of sorrow and pain without end.

⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we are false to ourselves and there is nothing true in us.

⁹ If we say openly that we have done wrong, he is upright and true to his word, giving us forgiveness of sins and making us clean from all evil.

¹⁰ If we say that we have no sin, we make him false and his word is not in us.

¹⁰ And I will send down on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of prayer; and their eyes will be turned to the one who was wounded by their hands: and they will be weeping for him as for an only son, and their grief for him will be bitter, like the grief of one sorrowing for his oldest son.

¹⁶ Get the people together, make the mass of the people holy, send for the old men, get together the children and babies at the breast: let the newly married man come out of his room and the bride from her tent.

¹⁷ Let the priests, the servants of the Lord, be weeping between the covered way and the altar, and let them say, Have mercy on your people, O Lord, do not give up your heritage to shame, so that the nations become their rulers: why let them say among the peoples, Where is their God?

¹⁸ Then the Lord had a care for the honour of his land and had pity on his people.

² O Israel, come back to the Lord your God; for your evil-doing has been the cause of your fall.

³ And turning my face to the Lord God, I gave myself up to prayer, requesting his grace, going without food, in haircloth and dust.

⁴ And I made prayer to the Lord my God, putting our sins before him, and said, O Lord, the great God, greatly to be feared. keeping your agreement and mercy with those who have love for you and do your orders;

¹⁷ But if you do not give ear to it, my soul will be weeping in secret for your pride; my eye will be weeping bitterly, streaming with water, because the Lord's flock has been taken away as prisoners.

¹ If only my head was a stream of waters and my eyes fountains of weeping, so that I might go on weeping day and night for the dead of the daughter of my people!

⁴⁰ And they will have grief for their sins and for the sins of their fathers, when their hearts were untrue to me, and they went against me;

⁴¹ So that I went against them and sent them away into the land of their haters: if then the pride of their hearts is broken and they take the punishment of their sins,

¹² Make all the people come together, men and women and children, and anyone from another country who is with you, so that hearing they may become wise in the fear of the Lord your God, and take care to do all the words of this law;

³ And the Lord said to him, Your prayers and your requests for grace have come to my ears: I have made holy this house which you have made, and I have put my name there for ever; my eyes and my heart will be there at all times.

⁹ And Nehemiah, who was the Tirshatha, and Ezra, the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were the teachers of the people, said to all the people, This day is holy to the Lord your God; let there be no sorrow or weeping; for all the people were weeping on hearing the words of the law.

²⁸ And the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the door-keepers, the music-makers, the Nethinim, and all those who had made themselves separate from the peoples of the lands, to keep the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone who had knowledge and wisdom;

⁵ I made my wrongdoing clear to you, and did not keep back my sin. I said, I will put it all before the Lord; and you took away my wrongdoing and my sin. (Selah.)

⁵ And when these days came to an end, we went on our journey; and they all, with their wives and children, came with us on our way till we were out of the town: and after going on our knees in prayer by the sea,

³⁰ And Cornelius said, Four days from now I was in my house in prayer at the ninth hour; and I saw before me a man in shining clothing,

¹³ And all Judah were waiting before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children.

⁴ Now on hearing these words which the angel of the Lord said to all the children of Israel, the people gave themselves up to loud crying and weeping.

⁵ And they gave that place the name of Bochim, and made offerings there to the Lord.