These sought the register of their birth, and found none, therefore were they put from the priesthood.

That it may be sought in the Chronicles of thy progenitors, and so shalt thou find in the same Chronicles, and perceive, that this city is seditious and noisome unto kings and lands, and that they cause others also to rebel of the old, and for the same cause was this city destroyed.

and I have commanded to make search: and it is found, that this city, of old, hath made insurrection against kings; and how the uproar and rebellion hath been committed therein.

So at Ecbatana, in a castle that lieth in the land of the Medes, there was found a book, and in it was there an act written after this manner:

and all the silver and gold that thou canst find in all the country of Babylon; with it that the people and priests give of their own good will unto the house of God at Jerusalem.

And I gathered them together by the water that runneth toward Ahava, and there abode we three days. And when I looked among the people and the priests, I found no Levites there.

But the people are many, and it is a rainy weather; and the people are too faint to tarry without in the street - neither is this a work of one day or two, for we are many that have offended in this transgression.

And among the children of the priests there were men found that had taken strange wives, namely among the children of Jeshua the son of Jozadak and of his brethren, Maaseiah, and Eliezer, and Jarib, and Gedaliah.