77. And for our sins and our fathers’ we with our brethren and our kings and our priests were given up to the kings of the earth, to the sword, and to captivity, and for a prey with shame, to this day.
78. And now in some measure has mercy been showed to us from you, O Lord, that there should be left us a root and a name in the place of your sanctuary;
79. and to discover to us a light in the house of the Lord our God, and to give us food in the time of our servitude.
80. Yes, when we were in bondage, we were not forsaken of our Lord; but he made us gracious before the kings of Persia, so that they gave us food,
81. and glorified the temple of our Lord, and raised up the desolate Sion, to give us a sure dwelling in Jewry and Jerusalem.
82. And now, O Lord, what shall we say, having these things? For we have transgressed your commandments, which you gave by the hand of your servants the prophets, saying,
83. That the land, which you⌃ enter into to possess as a heritage, is a land polluted with the pollutions of the strangers of the land, and they have filled it with their uncleanness.
84. Therefore now shall you⌃ not join your daughters to their sons, neither shall you⌃ take their daughters to your sons.
85. Neither shall you⌃ seek to have peace with them for ever, that you⌃ may be strong, and eat the good things of the land, and that you⌃ may leave it for an inheritance to your children for evermore.
86. And all that is befallen is done to us for our wicked works and great sins: for you, O Lord, did make our sins light,
87. and did give to us such a root: but we have turned back again to transgress your law, in mingling ourselves with the uncleanness of the heathen of the land.
88. You was not angry with us to destroy us, till you had left us neither root, seed, nor name.
89. O Lord of Israel, you are true: for we are left a root this day.
90. Behold, now are we before you in our iniquities, for we can’t stand any longer before you by reason of these things.
91. And as Esdras in his prayer made his confession, weeping, and lying flat upon the ground before the temple, there gathered to him from Jerusalem a very great throng of men and women and children: for there was great weeping among the multitude.
92. Then Jechonias the son of Jeelus, one of the sons of Israel, called out, and said, O Esdras, we have sinned against the Lord God, we have married strange women of the heathen of the land, and now is all Israel aloft.
93. Let us make an oath to the Lord herein, that we will put away all our wives, which we have taken of the strangers, with their children,