Nehemiah 8:9
And Nehemiah, which is the Tirshatha, and Ezra the priest the scribe, and the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the people, This day is holy unto the LORD your God; mourn not, nor weep. For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.
The gathering belonged to the Feast of Trumpets at Jerusalem, when people came in from the surrounding country and assembled amid the ruins of the city to hear God's law and have it explained to them in worship and instruction. It stood in a broad street in Jerusalem among partly ruined buildings, where Ezra stood on a raised wooden platform and held open the Book of the Law of Moses before a large assembly of men who listened attentively, and the law that moved them included the Ten Commandments. All the people wept when they heard the law, once its meaning was made clear and they understood it.
Their weeping was conviction over transgression, for they recognized their guilt in not having lived according to God's commandments. They saw that they were under God's displeasure for failing to live by His commandments, even though they had sinned ignorantly. The reading brought to mind their sins and the blessings they had lost through disobedience.
Nehemiah the Tirshatha, Ezra the priest the scribe, and the Levites who taught the people told all the people not to mourn or weep, because that day was holy to the Lord their God. Their grief over sin was to be held back because the day was a holy festival appointed for rejoicing and a reminder of God's mercy, so their sorrow was turned toward rejoicing in the Lord. To hear Scripture again after the exile was itself a privilege and a reason for joy and for praise for God's mercy. The response when the law was read in Ezra's day is the kind of deep repentance and return to the Lord later expected from preaching.