Nehemiah 9

Prayer for the history books

An extra Yom Kippur

1Near the end of the month,[1] on the 24th, the Jews met for a solemn time of worship. They fasted, sprinkled dirt on their heads, and dressed in clothes made from rough feed sack material.[2]

2Jews in the mixed crowd separated themselves from non-Jews. Then together they stood and confessed their sins and the sins of their ancestors. 3Then they spent half the day, about six hours, listening to the God’s laws and praying. For the first three hours, they stood and listened to someone read from the Book of Law.[3] Then for the next three hours they confessed their sins to the LORD and worshipped him in prayer.[4]

4Several Levites climbed up onto some steps and began crying out to the LORD loudly and intensely.[5] They were Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani.

Levites’ prayer: History of Israel’s sins

5Then a group of Levites led them in a public prayer confessing their nation’s long history with sin. The Levites were Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah. This is what they prayed:

“Stand up and shower the LORD with praise.
Honor the eternal God.
Words can’t do justice to your glorious wonder, LORD.
They fall pitifully short.
6You are the LORD, the one and only.
You made the sky and everything in it.
You made the earth and sea and everything in them.
You gave life to every living thing.
Every light in the sky worships you for it.[6]
7You are the God who chose Abram.
You brought him here from Ur, in Chaldea.[7]
And you gave him the new name of Abraham.
8You read his heart and knew you could trust him.
So, you made a sacred agreement[8] with him.
You promised his descendants a homeland—
The land occupied by Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites,
Perizzites, Jebusites, and Girgashites.
You did what you promised, giving them the land,
Because you’re trustworthy, too.

Freeing Israel from Egypt

You saw how our enslaved ancestors suffered in Egypt.
You heard their cry, trapped beside the sea.[9]
10You used your power in a display of miracles
To break the will of Pharaoh and his officials.
You knew they were abusing our ancestors.
What you did made a lasting impression on everyone,
For people still talk about those stories.
11You cut a pass through the impassable sea
And led our ancestors safely across.
But people chasing them drowned when they followed.
12You led Hebrews by daylight with a pillar of smoke,
And by night with a pillar of fire.

God talks law at Mount Sinai

You came down to Mount Sinai
And gave them your laws,
Helpful rules for living,
Commandments to obey.
14You taught them the Sabbath,
The day of worship and rest.
And you gave them your Law
Through the teachings of Moses.
15When they got hungry,
You gave them manna[10] bread from heaven.
When they got thirsty,
You gave them water from the rock.[11]
You told them to take the land you gave them.
16But our stubborn ancestors
Presumed they knew better than you.
So, they didn’t go,
And they ignored your laws.

God’s never-ending love

They rejected your rules
Forgot your miracles,
Stiffened their position against you
And chose a new leader
to take them back to Egypt and slavery.
Fortunately for them, you are slow to get angry,
Eager to forgive, kind in the forgiving,
Merciful toward those you love,
And never-ending in the love you give them.
18They molded themselves a calf[12] as their god.
They said to each other,
‘This is your God who brought us here from Egypt.’
They demeaned you in other terrible ways.
19Even then, you showed them mercy.
You didn’t abandon them to the wasteland.
You still led them by day with a pillar of smoke
And by night with a pillar of fire.
20You gave them your Spirit
To teach them your rules for living.
You kept sending them manna,
The bread of heaven.
And you gave them water for thirst.
21Throughout 40 years in the badlands
You gave them whatever they needed.
Even their clothes survived the 40 years.
In all that time, their feet never swelled.

Israel conquers kingdoms

Wherever they went,
You gave them kingdoms, people, and land.
King Sihon[13] of Heshbon fell.
So did King Og of Bashan.
Our people won both kingdoms in war.
23Their families grew to fill the land
Like stars fill the sky.
You brought them to where you promised,
To the land their fathers rejected.
24Our people conquered the locals and took their nations.
Powerful Canaan, with all those kings,
Had no choice but to collapse in defeat.
25Our people captured their walled cities.
They took possession of their fine farms,
And moved into the houses full of supplies,
Built beside cisterns storing water.
Our people became farmers.
They tended vineyards, olive orchards, and fruit trees.
The people ate well
And were grateful to God for his kindness.

Israel, serial sinner

Yet they turned their backs on you.
They killed prophets who tried to warn them
About the consequences of their despicable sins.
27So, you let their enemies conquer them.
But our people called you when the suffering got tough.
You sent heroic leaders[14] to rescue them—
A tribute to your mercy.
28They recovered but cycled back into their bad habits.
They sinned. You abandoned them to their enemies.
Their enemies made life miserable for them.
They called you for help. And you rescued them again
And again and again.
29You warned them to obey the law,
Assuring them it was a matter of life and death.
Stubbornly, they broke the law.
30Yet you remained patient.
You send your Spirit to the prophets with messages of warning,
Which the people decided to ignore.
So, you finally let their foreign enemies conquer them.
31Mercifully, you didn’t erase them from the world.
You didn’t give up on them.
You are kind and caring.

A pray for payback

Here we are now,
With our powerful and magnificent God.
Don’t overlook how others have hurt us.
From the time of Assyrians until now,
Invaders have hurt us all:
kings, officials, priests, prophets,
And all the rest of your people.
33You have been fair to us,
Punishing us like we deserve.
We did the sin and paid the price.
We had become evil people.
34We all broke your laws—
Our kings, officials, priests, and everyone else.
We broke your laws and ignored your warnings.
35We even ignored you when you blessed us
With prosperity and peace in a rich and sprawling land.
36Here we stand today,
Slaves in the land you gave our ancestors—
Land rich in food and in wonderful gifts.
37But all these wonderful crops belong to foreign kings.
They rule us because of the sins we’ve committed.
They control our bodies, our lives, and our livestock.
They do whatever they want with us.
And we live in constant fear because of it."

Footnotes

Intro Notes to Nehemiah

19:1

Tishri (mid-September to mid-October).

29:1

They wore sackcloth, a rough fabric like burlap feed sacks. It was made from goat hair and camel hair. Farmers and their customers used those sacks to store grain. People mourning in Bible times dressed in rough clothes and sprinkled their heads and bodies with dirt or cooled ashes from firewood. This disheveled look expressed the chaos and grief inside them. The description of what’s going on here sounds like Yom Kippur, also called the Day of Atonement. It’s the holiest and most sacred day in the Jewish year. But the Law calls for Jews to celebrate it on the 10^th day of that month, Tishri (mid-August to mid-September). See Leviticus 16:29. Perhaps they found this law too late, so they celebrated at first opportunity, after they finished the Festival of Temporary Shelters.

39:3

Jewish tradition credits Moses with writing the first five books of the Bible, known by many Jews as the Torah, a Hebrew word that can mean “teaching,” as in the “teaching” of Moses. The five books, however, are anonymous. The people in Nehemiah’s Jerusalem may not have been listening to a reading of all five books. They may have been hearing just Deuteronomy, reportedly a collection of the speeches Moses made before he died. This book reads like a summary of the most important Jewish laws, condensed into one book. It’s a little like the teachings of Jesus condensed into the Gospel of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5—7).

49:3

That’s a lot of confession. Three hours of talking about their sins? Well, they had a lot to talk about as a nation—and a long and well-preserved history of their relationship with sin. They had just returned from exile that happened because of their sins, which included idolatry and human sacrifice (2 Kings 21:6-8).

59:4

This doesn’t seem to be just a loud prayer. The Hebrew phrase describing it often shows up as the cry of someone traumatized in grief or in danger. After the opening prayer, a second group of Levites will lead an impassioned prayer expressed in perhaps a song or a recitation written for this meeting.

69:6

This prayer begins at creation and traces a fast-paced version of Israel’s rocky history with God and goodness. The people kept wandering from God, spending much of their history on the Naughty List. And this verse begins a concise overview of Israel’s highs and lows up until Nehemiah’s time, when Judah has become a servant kingdom under the thumb of the Persian king, headquartered in what is now Iran.

79:7

Abraham, formerly known as Abram, grew up in the city of Ur, now a ruin in southern Iraq. In Abraham’s time, this large city on the Euphrates River was in a marshy area known as Chaldea, near the northern tip of the Persian Gulf.

89:8

Often translated “covenant.” Later, God also entered into an agreement—a covenant or a contract—with the Jewish people. He promised to protect them and bless them with success in life. In return the Jewish people were to obey the laws Moses gave them. The Book of Deuteronomy is a summary of those laws and the rituals they were to observe. For one, they were to sacrifice animals to atone for their sins and to thank God for his kindness. Deuteronomy 28 lays out the rewards the Jewish people get for honoring their part of the agreement and the penalties for breach of contract, which meant breaking the laws. Observant Jews today still take these laws and rituals seriously.

99:9

Many Bibles say “Red Sea.” But the Hebrew words are yam suph, “sea reeds.” Moses and the Hebrew refugees escaped through a path God made in this mysterious body of water. Scholars usually track Moses and the Hebrews escaping Egypt by walking southeast, out of the Nile Delta fields and toward the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula. They would have passed through lake regions along what is now the Suez Canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. These lakes and ponds reportedly had reeds growing along the banks, like the ones the Bible says grew along the Nile River and helped anchor Baby Moses in a basket (Exodus 2:3).