“And now, O Lord our God, you have brought your people forth out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and have made for yourself a name as at this day. We have sinned, we have done wickedly. O Lord, in accordance with all your righteousness, let your anger and your fury, I pray you, be turned away from Jerusalem your city, the mountain of your holiness, because for our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a reproach to all who are round about us.”
He reminds God as the Lord that by His great and powerful deliverance from Egypt He had established what He was, He had ‘made for Himself a Name' which had continued to this day. He admitted that in themselves they deserved nothing. They had sinned and done wickedly. But He asked God to reveal the righteousness that all good men knew that He had, by turning His anger away from Jerusalem His city, from His holy mountain so that the reproach of non-Israelites round about, in what they said about YHWH, might be shown to be false. Thus it was to be for the sake of His own holy name (‘that they might know that I am the Lord YHWH' was a regular cry on the lips of God through Ezekiel), not for the sake of His totally undeserving people who had brought this judgment on Jerusalem.
‘The mountain of your holiness.' All that was left of Jerusalem at this time was the mountain and huddles of ruined buildings, some of which had probably been made barely habitable by people struggling to survive.