Daniel 9:3

¹⁰For the LORD says, “After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. ¹¹For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,” says the LORD, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future. ¹²You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³You shall seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart.

³‘Call to me, and I will answer you, and will show you great and difficult things, which you don’t know.’

¹⁶Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. ¹⁷Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it didn’t rain on the earth for three years and six months. ¹⁸He prayed again, and the sky gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

⁴When I heard these words, I sat down and wept, and mourned several days; and I fasted and prayed before the God ^[+] of heaven, ⁵and said, “I beg you, LORD, ^[+] the God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and loving kindness with those who love him and keep his commandments, ⁶let your ear now be attentive and your eyes open, that you may listen to the prayer of your servant which I pray before you at this time, day and night, for the children of Israel your servants, while I confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against you. Yes, I and my father’s house have sinned. ⁷We have dealt very corruptly against you, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances, which you commanded your servant Moses.

⁸“Remember, I beg you, the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you trespass, I will scatter you among the peoples; ⁹but if you return to me, and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts were in the uttermost part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and will bring them to the place that I have chosen, to cause my name to dwell there.’

¹⁰“Now these are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. ¹¹Lord,^[+] I beg you, let your ear be attentive now to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name; and please prosper your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” Now I was cup bearer to the king.

⁵At the evening offering I rose up from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn; and I fell on my knees, and spread out my hands to the LORD my God;

¹⁶“Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Susa, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day. I and my maidens will also fast the same way. Then I will go in to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.”

⁸Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.

⁶Then Ezra rose up from before God’s house, and went into the room of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib. When he came there, he didn’t eat bread or drink water, for he mourned because of the trespass of the exiles.

²¹Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a straight way for us, for our little ones, and for all our possessions.

¹³Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, ^[+] for the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from your God’s house.