And Judah said, What can we say to my lord? What can we speak, and in what can we justify ourselves? God has found out the iniquity of your servants; behold, we are slaves to my lord, both we and he in whose hand the cup was found.
which You have commanded by Your servants the prophets, saying, The land into which you go, to possess it, it is an unclean land with the impurity of the people of the lands, with their disgusting things with which they have filled it, from mouth to mouth with their uncleanness.
For we were slaves, yet our God has not left us in our bondage, but has given mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to raise up the house of our God, and to make stand its ruins, and to give to us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem.
But many years You had patience with them, and testified against them by Your Spirit, by Your prophets. Yet they would not give ear. And You gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.
And our kings, our rulers, our priests, and our fathers have not kept Your Law, and not attended to Your commands and Your testimonies with which You testified against them.
But we know that as many things as the law says, it says to the ones within the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world be accountable to God.