King James Version · The Persian return
Nehemiah 9
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Now in the twenty and fourth day of this month the were assembled with , and with sackclothes, and earth upon them. And the of Israel separated themselves from all strangers, and stood and their , and the of their fathers. And they stood up in their place, and read in the book of of their one fourth part of the day; and another fourth part they , and their . Then stood up upon the stairs, of the , , and , , , , , , and Chenani, and cried with a loud voice unto their . Then the , , and , , Hashabniah, , Hodijah, , and , said, Stand up and your : and be thy name, which is exalted above all and . Thou, even thou, art alone; thou hast made , the , with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and worshippeth thee. Thou art the , who didst choose , and broughtest him forth out of of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of ; And foundest before thee, and madest a with him to give the land of , the , the , and the , and the , and the , to give it, I say, to , and hast performed thy words; for thou art : And didst see the affliction of our fathers in , and heardest their cry by ; And shewedst signs and wonders upon , and on all his servants, and on all the people of his land: for thou knewest that they dealt proudly against them. So didst thou get thee a name, as it is this day. And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land; and their persecutors thou threwest into the deeps, as a stone into the mighty waters. Moreover thou leddest them in the day by a cloudy pillar; and in the night by a , to give them in wherein they should go. Thou camest down also upon , and spakest with them from , and gavest them right judgments, and true laws, good and : And madest known unto them thy , and commandedst them precepts, , and laws, by the hand of thy servant: And gavest them for their , and broughtest forth water for them out of for their thirst, and promisedst them that they should go in to possess the land which thou hadst to give them. But they and our fathers dealt proudly, and , and hearkened not to thy , And refused to , neither were mindful of thy wonders that thou didst among them; but , and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage: but thou art a ready to pardon, and merciful, , and of great kindness, and forsookest them not. Yea, when they had made them a molten calf, and said, This is thy that brought thee up out of , and had wrought great provocations; Yet thou in thy manifold forsookest them not in : of the cloud departed not from them by day, to lead them in ; neither of by night, to shew them , and wherein they should go. Thou gavest also thy good to instruct them, and withheldest not thy from their , and gavest them water for their thirst. Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in , so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not. Moreover thou gavest them kingdoms and nations, and didst divide them into corners: so they the land of , and the land of the king of , and the land of king of . Their children also multipliedst thou as the stars of , and broughtest them into the land, concerning which thou hadst promised to their fathers, that they should go in to possess it. So the children went in and the land, and thou subduedst before them the inhabitants of the land, , and gavest them into their hands, with their kings, and the people of the land, that they might do with them as they would. And they took strong cities, and a fat land, and houses full of all goods, wells digged, vineyards, and oliveyards, and fruit trees in abundance: so they did eat, and were filled, and became fat, and delighted themselves in thy great goodness. Nevertheless they were , and rebelled against thee, and cast thy law behind their backs, and slew thy which testified against them to turn them to thee, and they wrought great provocations. Therefore thou deliveredst them into the hand of their , who vexed them: and in the time of their trouble, when they cried unto thee, thou heardest them from ; and according to thy manifold thou gavest them saviours, who them out of the hand of their . But after they had rest, they did evil again before thee: therefore leftest thou them in the hand of their , so that they had the over them: yet when they returned, and cried unto thee, thou heardest them from ; and many times didst thou them according to thy ; And testifiedst against them, that thou mightest bring them again unto thy law: yet they dealt proudly, and hearkened not unto thy , but against thy judgments, (which if a man do, he shall live in them;) and withdrew the shoulder, and hardened their neck, and would not hear. Yet many years didst thou forbear them, and testifiedst against them by thy in thy : yet would they not give ear: therefore gavest thou them into the hand of the people of the lands. Nevertheless for thy great ’ sake thou didst not utterly consume them, nor forsake them; for thou art a and merciful . Now therefore, our , the great, the mighty, and the terrible , who keepest and mercy, let not all the trouble seem little before thee, that hath come upon us, on our kings, on our princes, and on our priests, and on our , and on our fathers, and on all thy people, since the time of the kings of unto this day. Howbeit thou art in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly: Neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept thy law, nor hearkened unto thy and thy testimonies, wherewith thou didst testify against them. For they have not thee in their kingdom, and in thy great goodness that thou gavest them, and in the large and fat land which thou gavest before them, neither turned they from their works. Behold, we are servants this day, and for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it: And it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our : also they over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress. And because of all this we make a sure , and write it; and our princes, , and priests, seal unto it.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The Persian return, 539 BC to 332 BC ›
Persia takes Babylon and reverses its policy, sending exiled peoples home to rebuild their temples. Judah returns as a small province, rebuilding under imperial permission rather than independence.
- Persia
- The largest empire the world had yet seen, from the Indus to the Aegean, run through provinces, a royal road, and a postal system. Its policy on conquered peoples was to send them home and fund their temples, in exchange for loyalty and prayers for the king. The Cyrus Cylinder states the policy in Cyrus's own words, and Ezra opens with the same policy applied to Judah.
- Judah
- A small, poor province called Yehud, a fraction of the old kingdom, with a rebuilt temple that made the people who remembered the first one weep. No king, and no prospect of one. Leadership passes to priests and scribes, which shapes everything afterward.
- Greece
- Persia and Greece collide at Marathon and Salamis, Persia loses, and Athens spends the following decades on the Parthenon, tragedy, and Socrates. Herodotus writes the first history in order to explain that war. Then Plato and Aristotle, whose vocabulary the church will still be using at Nicaea eight centuries later.
- Further afield
- Rome throws out its kings and becomes a republic. In India and China this is the age of the Buddha's early followers and of Confucian teaching taking hold. More of what the world still thinks with was invented in this era than in almost any other.