Scripture Daily

Context No. 728 of 4322 · Nehemiah

Context · Reflection

Nehemiah 9:1-8: in context

1Now in the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, with sackcloth, and dirt on them. 2The offspring of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3They stood up in their place, and read in the book of the law of the LORD their God a fourth part of the day; and a fourth part they confessed and worshiped the LORD their God. 4Then Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani of the Levites stood up on the stairs, and cried with a loud voice to the LORD their God. 5Then the Levites, Jeshua, and Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, “Stand up and bless the LORD your God from everlasting to everlasting! Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise! 6You are the LORD, even you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their army, the earth and all things that are on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve them all. The army of heaven worships you. 7You are the LORD, the God who chose Abram, brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees, gave him the name of Abraham, 8found his heart faithful before you, and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite, to give it to his offspring, and have performed your words, for you are righteous.

The wall of Jerusalem is finished, the law has been read aloud, and now the returned exiles gather for a day of confession, in sackcloth with dust on their heads. They separate themselves, and they stand and confess their own sins and the sins of their fathers, reading the law for a quarter of the day and confessing for another quarter. Then the Levites lead them in one of the longest prayers in the Bible, and where it starts is worth noticing.

It does not start with the sins. It starts with God. Stand up and bless the LORD your God, the Levites cry, and then: you are the LORD, you alone; you made the heavens and the earth and the seas and everything in them, and you keep them all alive, and the host of heaven bows to you. Only after that does it come down to Abraham, whom God brought out of Ur and whose heart he found faithful, and to the covenant God made and, the prayer insists, has kept, because you are righteous. The confession of a nation's failure is set inside a rehearsal of God's faithfulness. They measure their sin not against their own low expectations but against how faithful he has been, and that is what makes it a real confession rather than mere despair.

The people confessed their sin only after rehearsing how faithful God had been. When I own what I have done wrong, do I set it against his faithfulness, or just sink into the failure alone?

Sources