let Your ear now be open, and Your eyes open, so that You may hear the prayer of Your servant, which I pray before You now, day and night, for the sons of Israel Your servants, and confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both I and my father's house have sinned.

We have acted very wickedly against You, and have not kept the commandments nor the statutes nor the judgments which You commanded Your servant Moses.

but if you turn to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though you were cast out to the outermost part of the heavens, yet I will gather you from there and will bring you to the place that I have chosen to set My name there.

And these are Your servants and Your people whom You have redeemed by Your great power and by Your strong hand.

And I answered them and said to them, The God of Heaven, He will bless us, and we, His servants, will arise and build. But you have no portion or right or memorial in Jerusalem.

And do not cover their iniquity, and do not let their sin be blotted out from before You. For they have provoked You to anger before the builders.

And our foes have said, They shall not know, or see, until we come in the middle of them, and kill them, and cause the work to cease.

Some also said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses. Let us buy grain because of the famine.

And some said, We have borrowed money on our lands and vineyards for the king's tax.

Yet now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers, our sons like their sons. And, lo, we bring our sons and our daughters into bondage, to be slaves, and some of our daughters are brought into bondage. And there is no power for our hand, for other men have our lands and vineyards.

And I said to them, According to our ability we have redeemed our brothers, the Jews who were sold to the nations. And will you even sell your brothers? Or shall they be sold to us? And they were silent and did not find an answer.

And from the time that I was chosen to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year even to the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes the king, twelve years, I and my brothers have not eaten the bread of the governor.

Think upon me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people.

And you have also set up prophets to preach about you at Jerusalem, saying, There is a king in Judah. And now it shall be reported to the king according to these words. And now come and let us talk it over together.

My God, think upon Tobiah and Sanballat according to these works of theirs, and on the prophetess Noadiah, and the rest of the prophets who would have made me afraid.

You, even You, are Jehovah alone. You have made the heavens, heaven of the heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things on it, the seas, and all in them, and You preserve them all. And the host of the heavens worships You.

and found his heart faithful before You, and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite, and the Girgashite, to give it to his seed. And You have performed Your words, for You are righteous.

But You are just in all that is brought upon us, for You have done right, but we have done wickedly.

And our kings, our rulers, our priests, and our fathers, have not kept Your Law, nor listened to Your commandments and Your words with which You testified against them.

For they have not served You in their kingdom, and in Your great goodness which You gave them, and in the large and rich land which You gave before them, and they did not turn from their wicked works.

And it yields much increase to the kings whom You have set over us because of our sins. And they rule over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress.

and that we should bring the firstfruits of our dough, and our offerings, and the fruit of all kinds of trees, of wine and of oil, to the priests, to the rooms of the house of our God; and the tithes of our ground to the Levites, and they, the Levites, might have the tithes in all the cities we farmed.

Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds which I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices of it.

Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites.