Bede : He did not eat bread, etc. Here they will have an excellent example not only of weeping and praying, but also of fasting for those who have sinned; and since blessed are those who mourn, who weep for their own sins, because after receiving remission, they are comforted, how much more are they to be believed blessed, who also mourn for the errors of their brothers; and this to such an extent that they do not even want to touch bread and water, which is the nourishment of those who abstain, nor enter their house, or ascend to their bed, but rather prefer to pray throughout the night in the courtyards of the house of the Lord. For there was the house of the priest, which, as evening came, Ezra is reported to have entered. Finally, another Edition instead of Johanan's bedchamber, has Johanan's vestry, by which name Scripture often refers to the porticoes surrounding the temple on all sides, in which the ministers and guards of the same temple used to reside. They also mourn now for the transgression of those who came from captivity, who grieve for those who, having been recently rescued from sins through repentance, have again fallen into sin, by which they might be once more captured by the devil. Regarding whose seducers, as about parents of impure wives, the apostle Peter speaks: For, speaking arrogant words of vanity, they entice by lusts of the flesh, those who have barely escaped (II Peter II). And a little later he speaks about those who, as if ascending from captivity, are nonetheless captured by luxury: For if, he says, those who have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first (Ibid.). — Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah