EXPOSITION
SOLEMN FAST KEPT, WITH CONFESSION OF SINS; AND VOLUNTARY COVENANT WITH GOD ENTERED INTO BY THE PEOPLE, AND SEALED TO BY THE PRINCES, PRIESTS, AND LEVITES (Nehemiah 9:1-38.). When the law was first read to them on the opening day of the seventh month, the people had shown strong feelings of compunction, an earnest desire to return to God by the thorny way of repentance. In checking this feeling on that particular day, Ezra and Nehemiah had conformed to prevalent ideas on the subject of festival observance, but had not intended to thwart the popular desire for some distinct penitential action, some marked public proceedings, which should at once furnish a vent to pent-up feeling, and serve as a starting-point from which individuals, or even the nation, might enter upon a new career. It is a very curious circumstance, and one not easy of explanation, that they did not fix on the 10th of the month the "great day of atonement"—as the most appropriate day of national humiliation and of general self-abasement. The proximity of that occasion would naturally and almost necessarily suggest it to them, and nothing could well exceed its intrinsic fitness. On that day, and that day only in the whole of the year, every soul was to afflict itself, and whatsoever soul did not do so was to be cut off and destroyed from among the people (Le 23:27-29). It can scarcely be that the observance of the day had ceased. Perhaps the time for preparation which the selection of this "feast of sorrow" would have allowed seemed too short. Perhaps it was thought undesirable to select for an extraordinary national act of self-humiliation a day which already possessed its own routine, and possibly its own ritual, of repentance. In any case, the fact was that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities came to the determination not to make any special use of the regular annual fast day, but to leave the observance of that occasion to the people's natural bent, and appoint a different day—one which had no traditional customs attached to it—for the solemn act of penitence on which the heart of the nation was set. As the feast of tabernacles lasted from the 15th of Tisri to the 22nd, it was necessary either to select a day before that holy week or after it. A day between the 10th and the 15th would have followed too close upon the day of atonement; a day, therefore, was appointed after the festival was over. Not, however, the very next day—the transition from joy to sorrow would in that case have been too abrupt—but the next day but one—the 24th (Nehemiah 9:1). Then, the multitude that had come up for the feast being still present, a great fast was kept—sackcloth was worn, dust was sprinkled on the head; for half the day the vast assembly remained in the great court of the temple, listening to the words of the law for three hours, and for three hours confessing their sins (verse 3); after this the Levites took the word, and, in the name of the whole people, blessed God, acknowledged his gracious providence and special goodness towards Israel throughout the entire course of their history (verses 5-25), confessed their sins and the sins of their fathers (verses 26-35), admitted the justice of their present low estate (verses 36, 37), and finally brought forward a written bond or covenant, whereto they invited those present to set their seals (verse 38), pledging them to "walk in God's law, and observe and do all his commandments," and to make a perpetual provision for the priests and for the temple service (Nehemiah 10:29-39). The words of the formula were, no doubt, carefully prepared beforehand, and show traces of the influence of Ezra, to whose prayer (Ezra 9:6-15) they bear a great resemblance. We may perhaps assume that they were his composition, and that, though he is not mentioned, he was present, directing all the proceedings, instructing and animating the Levites, and exercising an influence for good over all grades of the people. (The present chapter is closely united with that which follows, and must be studied in connection with it.)