11Now therefore make confession unto Jehovah, the God of your fathers, and do his pleasure; and separate yourselves from the peoples of the land, and from the foreign women.
12Then all the assembly answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said concerning us, so must we do.
13But the people are many, and it is a time of much rain, and we are not able to stand without: neither is this a work of one day or two; for we have greatly transgressed in this matter.
14Let now our princes be appointed for all the assembly, and let all them that are in our cities that have married foreign women come at appointed times, and with them the elders of every city, and the judges thereof, until the fierce wrath of our God be turned from us, until this matter be despatched.
15Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahzeiah the son of Tikvah stood up against this [matter]: and Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite helped them.
16And the children of the captivity did so. And Ezra the priest, [with] certain heads of fathers` [houses], after their fathers` houses, and all of them by their names, were set apart; and they sat down in the first day of the tenth month to examine the matter.
17And they made an end with all the men that had married foreign women by the first day of the first month.
