National Confession

9 Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the Israelites were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth and with earth on their heads.^{[a](A) 2} Then those of Israelite descent separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their ancestors.^{(B) 3} They stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth part of the day, and for another fourth they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God.^{(C) 4} Then Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani stood on the stairs of the Levites and cried out with a loud voice to the Lord their God.^{(D) 5} Then the Levites Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah said, “Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.”^(E)

⁶ And Ezra said,^[b] “You are the Lord, you alone; you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. To all of them you give life, and the host of heaven worships you.^{(F) 7} You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham;^{(G) 8} and you found his heart faithful before you and made with him a covenant to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite, and you have fulfilled your promise, for you are righteous.^(H)

⁹ “And you saw the distress of our ancestors in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea.^{[c](I) 10} You performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted insolently against our ancestors. You made a name for yourself that remains to this day.^{(J) 11} And you divided the sea before them, so that they passed through the sea on dry land, but you threw their pursuers into the depths like a stone into mighty waters.^{(K) 12} Moreover, you led them by day with a pillar of cloud and by night with a pillar of fire, to give them light on the way in which they should go.^{(L) 13} You came down also upon Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments,^{(M) 14} and you made known your holy Sabbath to them and gave them commandments and statutes and a law through Moses your servant.^{(N) 15} For their hunger you gave them bread from heaven, and for their thirst you brought water for them out of the rock, and you told them to go in to possess the land that you swore to give them.^(O)

¹⁶ “But they, our ancestors, acted presumptuously and stiffened their necks and did not obey your commandments;^{(P) 17} they refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their necks and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them.^{(Q) 18} Even when they had cast an image of a calf for themselves and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies,^{(R) 19} you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness; the pillar of cloud that led them in the way did not leave them by day nor the pillar of fire by night that gave them light on the way by which they should go.^{(S) 20} You gave your good spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouths and gave them water for their thirst.^{(T) 21} Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness so that they lacked nothing; their clothes did not wear out, and their feet did not swell.^{(U) 22} And you gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner,^[d] so they took possession of the land of King Sihon of Heshbon and the land of King Og of Bashan.^{(V) 23} You multiplied their descendants like the stars of heaven and brought them into the land that you had told their ancestors to enter and possess.^{(W) 24} So the descendants went in and possessed the land, and you subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hands, with their kings and the peoples of the land, to do with them as they pleased.^{(X) 25} And they captured fortress cities and a rich land and took possession of houses filled with all sorts of goods, hewn cisterns, vineyards, olive orchards, and fruit trees in abundance; so they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness.^(Y)

The Fall of Babylon

18 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illumined by his splendor.^{(A) 2} He called out with a mighty voice,

⁴ Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,

The Tradition of the Elders

15 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ² “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.”^{(A) 3} He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴ For God said,^[a] ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’^{(B) 5} But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’^[b] then that person need not honor the father.^{[c](C) 6} So, for the sake of your tradition, you nullify the word^[d] of God. ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:

Things That Defile

¹⁰ Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: ¹¹ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”^{(F) 12} Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” ¹³ He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.^{(G) 14} Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.^[e] And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.”^{(H) 15} But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.”^{(I) 16} Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding?^{(J) 17} Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? ¹⁸ But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.^{(K) 19} For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.^{(L) 20} These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”