While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and prostrating himself before the House of God, a very large assembly of Israelites—men, women and children—gathered around him. The people also wept very bitterly.
Hear the word of Adonai, O nations, and declare it in the distant islands, and say: ‘He who scattered Israel will gather and watch over him, as a shepherd does his flock.’
“Then I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication, when they will look toward Me whom they pierced. They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son and grieve bitterly for him, as one grieves for a firstborn.
As she stood behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to drench His feet with tears and kept wiping them with her head of hair. Then she was kissing His feet and anointing them with perfume.
So they gathered together at Mizpah, drew water and poured it out before Adonai. They fasted on that day and said there, “We have sinned against Adonai.” Then Samuel was judging Bnei-Yisrael at Mizpah.