10Ezra the priest stood up, and said to them, You have trespassed, and have married foreign women, to increase the guilt of Israel.
11Now therefore make confession to Yahweh, 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 with a loud voice, As you have 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 outside: 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 those who are in our cities who have married foreign women come at appointed times, and with them the elders of every city, and the judges of it, until the fierce wrath of our God be turned from us, until this matter be dispatched.
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.
16The children of the captivity did so. 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.
