Jewish Leaders: The Israelites, priests, Levites, and even our chiefs have intermarried with the daughters of non-Jews and adopted the cultures of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites. By mixing our families with theirs through marriage, our lineage is no longer pure, and the officials and rulers have been the worst offenders.

Ezra’s Prayer: ⁶ O my True God, witness my shame and embarrassment as I appeal to You. My True God, our sins are so great that they have flooded over us, and they have reached to the heavens. ⁷ Our people are chronic sinners, our sin is greater than we could have imagined, and You have tried to correct our behavior by subjecting our kings and our priests to death, captivity, theft, and shame by foreign rulers. Those pagans continue to rule us today. ⁸ Even though You, our Eternal God, have shown Your grace by preserving a remnant and by giving us a secure hold in Your holy place, may You, our God, brighten our eyes and grant us assurance even in our bondage to the Persian rulers. ⁹ We are still their slaves. In this bondage, You, our True God, have not forgotten us; Your loyal love inspired the kings of Persia to allow us to rebuild Your house and the walls to provide protection in Judah and Jerusalem.

¹⁰ But in spite of Your love, we have abandoned Your commands, and we have no excuse. ¹¹ You warned us through Your servants, the prophets, that the land of Canaan was polluted with pagans, that their evil actions had removed anything pure or good there, even filling up the land from end to end with horrible practices. ¹² You warned us not to marry our children to theirs, to seek treaties with them, or to covet their prosperity so that we would remain strong as a nation and as individuals, eating good foods from the earth and leaving that earth to Your children always.

¹³ In spite of Your mercy toward us—You, our True God, did not punish us as much as our obvious guilt and our evil actions required and have freed these exiles— ¹⁴ once again we have ignored Your commands. We married pagans and have taken on their horrible practices, knowing that Your anger would motivate You to destroy every last Jew without leaving any remnant people.

¹⁵ Eternal God of Israel, You are righteous and justified in everything You do. Today we are nothing but the preserved remnant who escaped Your wrath, and today we confess our guilt. None of us should be able to stand and be acquitted before You.