Every one of the company is dressed in this rough material; not only so, but the robe of each is made like a sack in shape, so that they look like a crowd of moving sacks, and on their heads are sprinkled earth and dust and ashes.
The rejoicing has turned into mourning, the feast into a fast.

A great sense of sin has come over the people; they feel their need of forgiveness, and they are come to seek it.
The meeting seems to have assembled about nine o'clock, the time of the morning sacrifice.

For a quarter of the day, for three hours, they read the law of God, for three hours more they fell prostrate on the ground, and confessed their sin.

Their prayers were led by Levites, standing on high scaffoldings where everyone could see them, where all could hear them as they cried with a loud voice to God.
Then just at the time of the evening sacrifice, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the Levites called to the kneeling multitude and bade them rise, 'Stand up and bless the Lord your God for ever and ever: and blessed be Thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.' Then the Levites went through the history of God's wonderful goodness to His people, to Abraham in Egypt, in the wilderness, in the land of Canaan; everywhere, and at all times He had been good to them, again and again He had delivered them.

But they--what had they done?
'Thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.