77. Because of our sins and the sins of our ancestors, we and our relatives, our kings, and our priests have fallen into the hands of foreign kings, and we have been slaughtered, robbed, and carried away as prisoners. We have been totally disgraced, as we still are today.
78. Now, Lord, for a short time you have shown us great mercy. You have allowed just a few of us to survive in order to carry on the name of Israel here in your holy Temple.
79. You have let the light of our nation shine again, after feeding us and taking care of us during the time of our slavery.
80. Even when we were slaves you did not abandon us; you made the emperors of Persia favour us, so that they gave us food,
81. restored the glory of your Temple, rebuilt the city of Jerusalem out of its ruins, and gave us a place of security here in Judah and Jerusalem.
82. “But now, Lord, what can we say, after you have done all this for us? We have again disobeyed the commands that you gave us through your servants, the prophets. They told us that
83. the land we were to occupy was an impure land because the heathen people who lived in it filled it with their disgusting deeds.
84. They told us that we should never intermarry with those people
85. and never seek peaceful relations with them if we wanted to be strong and enjoy the land and pass it on to our descendants for ever.
86. Even after everything that has happened to us in punishment for our sins, we know that you, Lord, have punished us less than we deserve
87. and have allowed us to survive. But we have rebelled again, broken your Law, and intermarried with these wicked people.
88. Yet you were not angry enough to destroy us completely and leave none of us alive, with no descendants and without our name.
89. Lord of Israel, you are faithful; you have allowed us to survive.
90. We confess our guilt to you; we have no right to come into your presence.”
91. While Ezra was bowing in prayer in front of the Temple, weeping and confessing these sins, a large group of people from Jerusalem — men, women, and children — gathered round him, all of them weeping bitterly.
92. Then Shecaniah son of Jehiel, one of the Israelites, said to Ezra, “We have sinned against the Lord by marrying foreign women, but even so, there is still hope for Israel.