Add parallel Print Page Options

10 They, along with their wives, and children, and domestic animals, every resident alien, hired worker, and purchased slave, girded themselves with sackcloth.[a](A) 11 And all the Israelite men, women, and children who lived in Jerusalem fell prostrate in front of the temple[b](B) and sprinkled ashes on their heads, spreading out their sackcloth before the Lord.(C) 12 The altar, too, they draped in sackcloth;[c] and with one accord they cried out fervently to the God of Israel not to allow their children to be seized, their wives to be taken captive, the cities of their inheritance to be ruined, or the sanctuary to be profaned and mocked for the nations to gloat over.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 4:10 Sackcloth: traditional sign of penitence and supplication is here taken to the extreme. Cf. Jon 3:8.
  2. 4:11 Fell prostrate in front of the temple: for a parallel to this ceremony of entreaty see Jl 1:13, 14; 2:15–17.
  3. 4:12 The altar…draped in sackcloth: attested nowhere else in the Bible.