1Now while Ezra was making his prayer and his statement of wrongdoing, weeping and falling down before the house of God, a very great number of men and women and children out of Israel came together round him: for the people were weeping bitterly.
2And Shecaniah, the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answering, said to Ezra, We have done evil against our God, and have taken as our wives strange women of the peoples of the land: but still there is hope for Israel in this question.
3Let us now make an agreement with our God to put away all the wives and all their children, if it seems right to my lord and to those who go in fear of the words of our God; and let it be done in keeping with the law.
4Up, now! for this is your business, and we are with you; take heart and do it.
5Then Ezra got up, and made the chiefs of the priests and the Levites and all Israel take an oath that they would do this. So they took an oath.
6Then Ezra got up from before the house of God and went into the room of Jehohanan, the son of Eliashib; but when he came there, he took no food or drink, for he was sorrowing for the sin of those who had come back.
7And they made a public statement through all Judah and Jerusalem, to all those who had come back, that they were to come together to Jerusalem;
