And Shecaniah son of Jehiel, one of the descendants of Elam answered and said to Ezra, 'We have sinned against our God and have married foreign wives from the peoples of the land'. Josephus says that this Shecaniah was the first of the citizens of Jerusalem who himself, as was proper for a leader, immediately used his great authority to support Ezra's plan, both by acknowledging that the people had sinned as he himself had done and by urging that it was necessary for them to do penance after casting out their foreign wives along with the children who were born of them.
