Ezra 10

²⁰While I was speaking, praying, confessing my sin and that of my people Israel, and presenting my petition before the Lord my God concerning His holy mountain—

¹³⁶My eyes shed streams of tears because Your law is not obeyed.

²I have deep sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

³⁰Hear the plea of Your servant and of Your people Israel when they pray toward this place. May You hear from heaven, Your dwelling place. May You hear and forgive.

⁸If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

⁹If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

⁹Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to all of them, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the Law.

²⁷Must we now hear that you too are doing all this terrible evil and acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?”

²Indeed, the Israelites have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed has been mixed with the people of the land. And the leaders and officials have taken the lead in this unfaithfulness!”

¹²Be careful not to make a treaty with the inhabitants of the land you are entering, lest they become a snare in your midst.

¹²Go, proclaim this message toward the north: ‘Return, O faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will no longer look on you with anger, for I am merciful,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will not be angry forever.

¹³Only acknowledge your guilt, that you have rebelled against the Lord your God. You have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every green tree and have not obeyed My voice,’” declares the Lord.

⁶Then the Lord passed in front of Moses and called out: “The Lord, the Lord God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness,

⁷maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”

²⁶From the descendants of Elam: Mattaniah, Zechariah, Jehiel, Abdi, Jeremoth, and Elijah.

²and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you to defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.

³Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,

⁴Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of the unfaithfulness of the exiles, while I sat there in horror until the evening offering.

¹²For if you turn away and cling to the rest of these nations that remain among you, and if you intermarry and associate with them,

¹³know for sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become for you a snare and a trap, a scourge in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the Lord your God has given you.

¹²To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If a brother has an unbelieving wife and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.

¹³And if a woman has an unbelieving husband and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.

¹²⁰My flesh trembles in awe of You; I stand in fear of Your judgments.

¹²so that you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, which He is making with you today, and into His oath,

¹⁰Consider now that the Lord has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary. Be strong and do it.”

¹⁰Whatever you find to do with your hands, do it with all your might, for in Sheol, where you are going, there is no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

¹⁹Now set your heart and soul to seek the Lord your God. Begin building the sanctuary of the Lord God, so that you may bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy articles of God into the temple that will be built for the Name of the Lord.”

¹²Therefore strengthen your limp hands and weak knees.

¹³Make straight paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

²⁴And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds.

³Strengthen the limp hands and steady the feeble knees!

⁴Say to those with anxious hearts: “Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance. With divine retribution He will come to save you.”

²⁵I rebuked them and called down curses on them. I beat some of these men and pulled out their hair. Then I made them take an oath before God and said, “You must not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters as wives for your sons or for yourselves!

¹²“We will restore it,” they replied, “and will require nothing more from them. We will do as you say.” So I summoned the priests and required of the nobles and officials an oath that they would do what they had promised.

⁹Instruct a wise man, and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man, and he will increase his learning.

⁵let the wise listen and gain instruction, and the discerning acquire wise counsel

³So now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all the foreign wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the command of our God. Let it be done according to the Law.

⁶³But Jesus remained silent. Then the high priest said to Him, “I charge You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God.”

¹⁸Then I fell down before the Lord for forty days and forty nights, as I had done the first time. I did not eat bread or drink water because of all the sin you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord and provoking Him to anger.

³¹Meanwhile the disciples urged Him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

³²But He told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

¹At the Sheep Gate, Eliashib the high priest and his fellow priests began rebuilding. They dedicated it and installed its doors. After building as far as the Tower of the Hundred and the Tower of Hananel, they dedicated the wall.

²²In the days of Eliashib, Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua, during the reign of Darius the Persian, the heads of the families of the Levites and priests were recorded.

¹⁰Jeshua was the father of Joiakim, Joiakim was the father of Eliashib, Eliashib was the father of Joiada,

²⁰Next to him, Baruch son of Zabbai diligently repaired another section, from the angle to the doorway of the house of Eliashib the high priest.

⁵So they established a decree to circulate a proclamation throughout Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, that the people should come to keep the Passover of the Lord, the God of Israel, in Jerusalem. For they had not observed it in great numbers as prescribed.

¹In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord stirred the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia to send a proclamation throughout his kingdom and to put it in writing as follows:

²⁶If anyone does not keep the law of your God and the law of the king, let a strict judgment be executed against him, whether death, banishment, confiscation of property, or imprisonment.

⁷He took a pair of oxen, cut them into pieces, and sent them by messengers throughout the land of Israel, proclaiming, “This is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not march behind Saul and Samuel.” Then the terror of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out together as one man.

¹⁹For all the silver and gold and all the articles of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord; they must go into His treasury.”

³As soon as the people heard this law, they excluded from Israel all of foreign descent.

²²His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews. For the Jews had already determined that anyone who confessed Jesus as the Christ would be put out of the synagogue.

⁵The Israelites asked, “Who among all the tribes of Israel did not come to the assembly before the Lord?” For they had taken a solemn oath that anyone who failed to come up before the Lord at Mizpah would surely be put to death.

¹⁷Is it not the wheat harvest today? I will call on the Lord to send thunder and rain, so that you will know and see what a great evil you have committed in the sight of the Lord by asking for a king.”

¹⁸So Samuel called to the Lord, and on that day the Lord sent thunder and rain. As a result, all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel.

¹⁶She was taken to King Xerxes in the royal palace in the tenth month, the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign.

¹³When He thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; He causes the clouds to rise from the ends of the earth. He generates the lightning with the rain and brings forth the wind from His storehouses.

⁸Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the fifth month of the seventh year of the king.

⁹He had begun the journey from Babylon on the first day of the first month, and he arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month, for the gracious hand of his God was upon him.

¹⁰But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and eternal King. The earth quakes at His wrath, and the nations cannot endure His indignation.

³²Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your fathers.

¹⁴Now behold, you, a brood of sinners, have risen up in place of your fathers to further stoke the burning anger of the Lord against Israel.

⁶and said: “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, because our iniquities are higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached the heavens.

¹⁷Was not the sin of Peor enough for us, from which we have not cleansed ourselves to this day? It even brought a plague upon the congregation of the Lord.

¹⁸And now, would you turn away from the Lord? If you rebel today against the Lord, tomorrow He will be angry with the whole congregation of Israel.

¹³“You must not bring the captives here,” they said, “for you are proposing to bring guilt upon us from the Lord and to add to our sins and our guilt. For our guilt is great, and fierce anger is upon Israel.”

²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

¹³He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.

¹⁹So Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and make a confession to Him. I urge you to tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me.”

³So now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all the foreign wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the command of our God. Let it be done according to the Law.

⁴⁰But if they will confess their iniquity and that of their fathers in the unfaithfulness that they practiced against Me, by which they have also walked in hostility toward Me—

⁴¹and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled and they will make amends for their iniquity,

¹⁶Wash and cleanse yourselves. Remove your evil deeds from My sight. Stop doing evil!

¹⁷Learn to do right; seek justice and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless and plead the case of the widow.”

³⁷Their hearts were disloyal to Him, and they were unfaithful to His covenant.

⁵⁷They turned back and were faithless like their fathers, twisted like a faulty bow.

²³In those days I also saw Jews who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

³So now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all the foreign wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the command of our God. Let it be done according to the Law.

⁴Get up, for this matter is your responsibility, and we will support you. Be strong and take action!”

¹³Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.

¹⁴But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.

¹⁸Among the descendants of the priests who had married foreign women were found these descendants of Jeshua son of Jozadak and his brothers: Maaseiah, Eliezer, Jarib, and Gedaliah.

¹⁹They pledged to send their wives away, and for their guilt they presented a ram from the flock as a guilt offering.

⁸Now do not stiffen your necks as your fathers did. Submit to the Lord and come to His sanctuary, which He has consecrated forever. Serve the Lord your God, so that His fierce anger will turn away from you.

¹⁰Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, so that His fierce anger will turn away from us.

⁴Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that His fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”

¹In that day you will say: “O Lord, I will praise You. Although You were angry with me, Your anger has turned away, and You have comforted me.

¹⁷Nothing devoted to destruction shall cling to your hands, so that the Lord will turn from His fierce anger, grant you mercy, show you compassion, and multiply you as He swore to your fathers,

³⁸And yet He was compassionate; He forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. He often restrained His anger and did not unleash His full wrath.

¹⁶Shabbethai and Jozabad, two leaders of the Levites, who supervised the work outside the house of God;

⁶The Jeshanah Gate was repaired by Joiada son of Paseah and Meshullam son of Besodeiah. They laid its beams and installed its doors, bolts, and bars.

³³along with Azariah, Ezra, Meshullam,

²⁰Magpiash, Meshullam, Hezir,

¹⁴then you must inquire, investigate, and interrogate thoroughly. And if it is established with certainty that this abomination has been committed among you,

¹⁶I was a father to the needy, and I took up the case of the stranger.

⁵¹“Does our law convict a man without first hearing from him to determine what he has done?”

²Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua son of Jozadak rose up and began to rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem. And the prophets of God were with them, helping them.

²Then Jeshua son of Jozadak and his fellow priests, along with Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and his associates, began to build the altar of the God of Israel to sacrifice burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God.

²accompanied by Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvai, Rehum, and Baanah. This is the count of the men of Israel:

¹In the second year of the reign of Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, stating

¹Then the angel showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, with Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

⁷The Levites—Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, and Pelaiah—instructed the people in the Law as they stood in their places.

⁶Then he must bring to the priest his guilt offering to the Lord: an unblemished ram of proper value from the flock.

¹⁵When he left there, he found Jehonadab son of Rechab, who was coming to meet him. Jehu greeted him and asked, “Is your heart as true to mine as my heart is to yours?” “It is!” Jehonadab replied. “If it is,” said Jehu, “give me your hand.” So he gave him his hand, and Jehu helped him into his chariot,

²⁴All the officials and mighty men, as well as all of King David’s sons, pledged their allegiance to King Solomon.

⁶We submitted to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread.

⁴once he has sinned and becomes guilty, he must return what he has stolen or taken by extortion, or the deposit entrusted to him, or the lost property he found,

⁹And recognizing the grace that I had been given, James, Cephas, and John—those reputed to be pillars—gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.

³⁷the descendants of Immer, 1,052;

¹⁴the fifteenth to Bilgah, the sixteenth to Immer,

⁴⁰the descendants of Immer, 1,052;

⁸the third to Harim, the fourth to Seorim,

³⁹and the descendants of Harim, 1,017.

⁴²and the descendants of Harim, 1,017.

¹²Adaiah son of Jeroham, the son of Pashhur, the son of Malchijah; Maasai son of Adiel, the son of Jahzerah, the son of Meshullam, the son of Meshillemith, the son of Immer;

⁴¹the descendants of Pashhur, 1,247;

³⁸the descendants of Pashhur, 1,247;

³³On the fourth day, in the house of our God, we weighed out the silver and gold and sacred articles into the hand of Meremoth son of Uriah, the priest. Eleazar son of Phinehas was with him, along with the Levites Jozabad son of Jeshua and Noadiah son of Binnui.

¹⁰and their associates: Shebaniah, Hodiah, Kelita, Pelaiah, Hanan,

¹⁶Shabbethai and Jozabad, two leaders of the Levites, who supervised the work outside the house of God;

³the descendants of Parosh, 2,172;

⁸the descendants of Parosh, 2,172;

²Then Shecaniah son of Jehiel, an Elamite, said to Ezra: “We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the people of the land, yet in spite of this, there is hope for Israel.

⁷from the descendants of Elam, Jeshaiah son of Athaliah, and with him 70 men;

³¹the descendants of the other Elam, 1,254;

¹²the descendants of Elam, 1,254;

³⁴the descendants of the other Elam, 1,254;

⁷the descendants of Elam, 1,254;

⁸the descendants of Zattu, 945;

¹³the descendants of Zattu, 845;

¹¹the descendants of Bebai, 623;

¹⁶the descendants of Bebai, 628;

¹¹from the descendants of Bebai, Zechariah son of Bebai, and with him 28 men;

⁴Hattush, Shebaniah, Malluch,

¹⁰the descendants of Bani, 642;

¹⁵the descendants of Binnui, 648;

⁴from the descendants of Pahath-Moab, Eliehoenai son of Zerahiah, and with him 200 men;

⁶the descendants of Pahath-moab (through the line of Jeshua and Joab), 2,812;

¹¹the descendants of Pahath-moab (through the line of Jeshua and Joab), 2,818;

¹¹Malchijah son of Harim and Hasshub son of Pahath-moab repaired another section, as well as the Tower of the Ovens.

³⁵the descendants of Harim, 320;

³²the descendants of Harim, 320;

²²the descendants of Hashum, 328;

¹⁹the descendants of Hashum, 223;

²⁹the descendants of Nebo, 52;

³³the men of the other Nebo, 52;

¹⁶It will rescue you from the forbidden woman, from the stranger with seductive words

³So now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all the foreign wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the command of our God. Let it be done according to the Law.

³Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil,

²⁰Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress, or embrace the bosom of a stranger?