Nehemiah / Confession, Praise, and a Recital of Israel's History

Confession, Praise, and a Recital of Israel's History

Nehemiah 9:1-37

Chapter 9

¹ And on the twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel gathered in fasting, in sackcloth, and with dust upon them. ² And they separated the seed of Israel from all the sons of foreignness, and they stood and confessed their sin offerings and the iniquities of their fathers. ³ They stood in their places and read from the book of the Torah of the LORD their God for a fourth of the day, and for a fourth they spent in confessions and prostrating themselves to the LORD their God. ⁴ And he stood on the ascent of the Levites: Jeshua and the sons of Kadmiel, Shebaniah, the sons of Sherebiah, the sons of Kenani, and they cried out with a great voice to the LORD their God. ⁵ The Levites—Jeshua and Kadmiel, Bani of Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, Pethahiah—said: "Arise, bless the LORD your God from everlasting to everlasting." And they blessed the name of your glory and exalted it above all blessing and praise. ⁶ You—you are the LORD alone. You made the heavens, the heaven of the heavens and all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you give life to them all. And the host of the heavens bows down to you. ⁷ You are the LORD, the God who chose Abram and brought him out from Ur of the Chaldeans and set his name Abraham. ⁸ And you found his heart faithful before you, and you cut a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Girgashites to his Seed, and you established your words, for you are righteous. ⁹ And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and you heard their outcry at the Sea of Reeds. ¹⁰ And you gave signs and wonders against Pharaoh and against all his servants and against all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted presumptuously against them, and you made for yourself a name, as at this day. ¹¹ And the sea split before them, and they crossed through the middle of the sea on dry land. And you hurled their pursuers into the depths like a stone into mighty waters. ¹² And in a pillar of cloud you led them by day, and in a pillar of fire by night to light for them the way they should go. ¹³ And on Mount Sinai you came down and spoke to them from heaven and gave them right judgments and true Torah, statutes and good commandments. ¹⁴ And you made your holy Sabbath known to them, and you commanded commandments and statutes and Torah to them by the hand of Moses your servant. ¹⁵ And bread from the heavens you gave them for their hunger, and water from the rock you brought out for their thirst, and you said to them to come to possess the land which you lifted your hand to give them. ¹⁶ And they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their necks and did not listen to your commandments. ¹⁷ And they refused to hear and did not remember your wonders that you did with them, and they hardened their neck and gave a head to return to their servitude in rebellion, and you, God of forgivenesses, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, did not abandon them. ¹⁸ Even though they made a molten golden calf for themselves and said, "This is your God who brought you up from Egypt," and they committed great blasphemies. ¹⁹ And you in your many mercies did not leave them in the wilderness; the pillar of the cloud did not turn away from over them by day to make them rest in the way, and the pillar of the fire by night to light for them the way in which they would walk. ²⁰ And you gave your good Spirit to make them understand wisely, and you did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. ²¹ And for forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing—their garments did not wear out, and their feet did not swell. ²² And you gave them kingdoms and peoples, and you divided them for a corner, and they inherited the land of Sihon and the land of the king of Heshbon and the land of Og king of Bashan. ²³ And you multiplied their sons like the stars of the heavens, and you brought them to the land that you had told their fathers to come and possess. ²⁴ And the sons came and possessed the land, and you humbled the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, before them, and you gave them into their hand, and their kings and the peoples of the land, to do with them according to their will. ²⁵ And they captured cities with distresses and a fat land, and they possessed houses full of all good things—cisterns hewn, vineyards and olive trees and food trees in abundance. And they ate and were satisfied and grew fat and delighted themselves in your great good. ²⁶ And they rebelled and revolted against you and threw your Torah behind their backs and killed your prophets who testified against them to return them to you and did great abominations. ²⁷ And you gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they oppressed them. And in the time of their distress they cried out to you, and you heard from the heavens. And according to your many mercies you gave them deliverers, and they delivered them from the hand of their enemies. ²⁸ And when they had rest, they would return to doing evil before you, and you would leave them in the hand of their enemies so they would rule over them. And they would return and cry out to you, and you from heaven would hear and would deliver them according to your many mercies many times. ²⁹ And you testified to them to return them to your Torah, but they acted presumptuously and did not listen to your commandments and sinned against your judgments—in which a man does them and lives by them—and they gave a rebellious shoulder and hardened their neck and did not listen. ³⁰ And you prolonged over them many years and testified against them by your Spirit through the hand of your prophets, and they did not listen, and you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. ³¹ And in your many mercies you did not make an end of them and did not abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God. ³² And now, our God, the great, mighty, and awesome God, keeper of the covenant and the steadfast love, do not let all the distress seem little before you, which has found us—for our kings, for our officials, for our priests, for our prophets, for our fathers, and for all your people—since the days of the kings of Assyria until this day. ³³ And you are righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have done truth, and we have acted wickedly. ³⁴ And our kings, our rulers, our priests, and our fathers did not do your Torah, and did not pay attention to your commandments and to your testimonies which you testified among them. ³⁵ And they, in their kingdom and in your great goodness which you gave them and in the wide and fat land which you gave before their faces, did not serve you and did not turn from their evil deeds. ³⁶ Behold, we are slaves today, and the land which you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its good—behold, we are slaves on it. ³⁷ And its produce is abundant to kings whom you have set over us because of our sins, and they rule over our bodies and our livestock according to their will, and in great affliction we are.