Nehemiah 9

This chapter opens the latter part of Nehemiah. In Nehemiah 8 the people heard the reading of the law and kept the Feast of Tabernacles. This chapter records how, on the twenty-fourth day of the same month, they assembled again with fasting and confessed their sins.

Outline

• Verses 1–3 On the twenty-fourth day of the month the children of Israel assemble, fasting, clothed in sackcloth, and with earth upon them. They separate themselves from foreigners, stand, and confess their own sins and the iniquities of their fathers. For a fourth part of the day they read from the book of the law, and for another fourth part they confess and worship.
• Verses 4–5 The Levites Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, and others stand upon the stairs (a raised platform) and cry out with a loud voice. They then call on the people to stand up and bless the LORD.
• Verses 6–8 The prayer acknowledges God as the One who made heaven and earth and recalls how He chose Abram, brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees, and promised him the land.
• Verses 9–15 The prayer recalls the deliverance from Egypt, the dividing of the Red Sea, the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, the giving of the law and the Sabbath at Mount Sinai, and the bread from heaven and the water from the rock.
• Verses 16–21 The fathers hardened their necks, sought to return to Egypt, and made a molten calf. Yet God did not forsake them but sustained them in the wilderness for forty years.
• Verses 22–25 Israel took possession of the lands of Sihon and Og, entered Canaan, and gained fortified cities and a fertile land.
• Verses 26–31 The people cast the law behind their backs and killed the prophets. When delivered into the hands of their enemies they cried out, and when rescued they did evil again, in a recurring cycle. Nevertheless, God did not utterly consume them.
• Verses 32–37 The prayer lays before God the troubles endured from the time of the kings of Assyria to the present day and acknowledges God's justice. It confesses that the people are now servants of foreign kings in the very land given to their fathers.
• Verse 38 The people make a sure covenant and write it, and the princes, Levites, and priests seal it.

Key Verses

• Nehemiah 9:17 "but thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger." Drawing on the confession of God's character in Exodus 34:6, this becomes the central confession that guides the entire prayer.
• Nehemiah 9:33 "for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly." This is the heart of the people's penitence, which locates the responsibility for their suffering not in God but in themselves.
• Nehemiah 9:38 "we make a sure covenant, and write it." This verse links the confession to the sealing of the covenant in Nehemiah 10.

People and Places

• The Levites Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Sherebiah, and others led this prayer.
• People mentioned in the prayer include Abraham, Pharaoh, and Moses. Sihon was king of Heshbon and Og was king of Bashan; both were kings east of the Jordan.
• Places mentioned in the prayer include Ur of the Chaldees, Canaan, Egypt, the Red Sea, and Mount Sinai. Assyria is mentioned as an enemy.

Points for Reflection

• The Hebrew text (the Masoretic Text) presents the prayer from verse 6 onward as a continuation of the Levites' words. The Septuagint, by contrast, adds "And Ezra said" before verse 6. For this reason some translations and commentaries present the prayer as the prayer of Ezra.
• Verse 38 in the Korean Revised Version and the New Korean Revised Version corresponds to 10:1 in the Hebrew Bible.
• The prayer summarizes, in a single sweep, the history from creation through the Exodus, the forty years in the wilderness, and the period of the judges to the Babylonian exile. Such historical retrospectives resemble in form Psalms 105 and 106 and Stephen's speech in Acts 7.
• The phrase in verse 29, "which if a man do, he shall live in them," comes from Leviticus 18:5. Paul quotes this verse in Romans 10:5 and Galatians 3:12 to explain the relationship between law and gospel.
• The separation "from all strangers" in verse 2 is often read together with the issue of intermarriage with foreigners in Ezra 9–10. The text itself, however, does not specify the details.