Nehemiah 1:4-11

(4-11) Nehemiah’s appeal to God. The prayer is a perfect example of the private and individual devotion with which the later Hebrew Scriptures abound. It begins with formal and appropriate invocation (Nehemiah 1:5), flows into earnest confession (Nehemiah 1:6), pleads the covenant promises (Nehemiah 1:8), and supplicates a present answer (Nehemiah 1:11). The extant Scriptures, freely used, are the foundation of all.

(4) Fasted. — Like Daniel, Esther, and Ezra, Nehemiah fasted: fasting appears in later Judaism a prominent part of individual devotion, as it is in the New Testament.

(6) Both I and my father’s house have sinned. — The supplication was for the nation; and in such cases of personal intercession the individual assumes the sin of all the past.

(8) The spirit of many threatenings and promises is summed up, as in the prayer of Nehemiah 9.

(11) This day... this man. — During his “certain days” of mourning Nehemiah had fixed upon his plan, suggested by his God. “This day” is “this occasion”: the appeal itself was deferred for some months. The king becomes “this man” in the presence of the “God of heaven.”

For I was the king’s cupbearer. — One of his cupbearers, therefore in high authority, having confidential access to him.