Ezra 9

1 And when these things were finished, the leaders came near to me and said, “The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the peoples of the lands and their loathsome practices — the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, the Ammonite, the Moabite, the Egyptian and the Amorite. [a] 2 For they have taken some of their daughters for themselves and for their sons, and the holy seed has been mixed in among the peoples of the lands; and the hand of the leaders has been first in this breaking of faith.”

3 And when I heard this word, I tore my garments, and I shook, and I pulled out some of the hair of my head and of my beard, and I sat down and said nothing. [c] 4 And everyone who pursued the word of the God of Israel gathered to me over the broken faith of those who had come back from exile; and I went on sitting there in silence until the evening sacrifice. [d]

5 And at the evening sacrifice I rose up out of my humiliation; and with my garments torn, I shook, and I went down on my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord God, 6 and I said, “Lord, I am ashamed, and I am too disgraced to lift my face up to you, for our lawless deeds have risen higher than our head, and our wrongdoings have grown as high as heaven. [e] 7 From the days of our fathers we have been in great wrongdoing until this day; and for our lawless deeds we ourselves, and our kings, and our sons, were handed over into the hand of the kings of the nations — to the sword, and to captivity, and to plunder, and to shame on our faces, as it is this day.

8 And now the Lord our God has dealt kindly with us, leaving us some who are rescued, and giving us a firm footing in the place of his sanctuary, to give light to our eyes and to give us a little life in our slavery. [f] 9 For we are slaves; and in our slavery the Lord our God has not abandoned us. He has turned mercy toward us in the sight of the kings of the Persians, to give us life, so that they might raise up the house of our God and set up again its ruined places, and to give us a fence in Judah and in Jerusalem.

10 What are we to say, our God, after this? For we have abandoned your commands, 11 which you gave us by the hand of your servants the prophets, saying, ‘The land you are going into to inherit is a land shifted about by the shifting of the peoples of the nations, in their loathsome practices, with which they have filled it from one end to the other in their uncleanness. [g] 12 And now do not give your daughters to their sons, and do not take their daughters for your sons, and you are never to seek their peace or their good — so that you may be strong, and eat the good things of the land, and leave it as an inheritance to your sons forever.’

13 And after everything that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great wrongdoing — for there is none like our God, since you made our lawless deeds light on us and gave us rescue — [h] 14 we have gone back to breaking your commands and to marrying into the peoples of the lands. Do not be provoked against us to the point of finishing us off, till there is no remnant and no survivor. [i] 15 Lord, God of Israel, you are righteous, for we are left as survivors, as it is this day. Look — we are before you in our wrongdoings, for there is no standing before you because of this.”