We Are Servants Today
32 Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness, don’t let all the travail seem little before you that has come on us, on our kings, on our princes, on our priests, on our prophets, on our fathers, and on all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria to this day. 33 However you are just in all that has come on us; for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly. 34 Also our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law, nor listened to your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them. 35 For they have not served you in their kingdom, and in your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land which you gave before them. They didn’t turn from their wicked works. 36 “Behold, we are servants today, and as for the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its good, behold, we are servants in it. 37 It yields much increase to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. Also they have power over our bodies and over our livestock, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress. 38 Yet for all this, we make a sure covenant, and write it; and our princes, our Levites, and our priests, seal it.”
The petition, when it finally comes, asks for nothing but attention — and the prayer ends by reaching for a pen.
Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness...
After thirty-one verses of history, the prayer turns to ask — and what it asks is almost nothing: don't let all the travail seem little before you. Not deliverance, not vengeance, not even relief. The petition is that God take their trouble seriously — attention, from the God whose attentiveness Nehemiah's first prayer had invoked Nehemiah 1:6. Everything else is left to him.
And before the trouble is described, the prayer clears God of it: however you are just in all that has come on us; for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly Nehemiah 9:33.
That sentence is the confession's summit. A people describing their own subjugation pause to certify the judge — the same verdict Ezra's prayer reached Ezra 9:15, and the exact opposite of the complaint the history might have produced. Kings, princes, priests and fathers are then indicted by office, with the sharpest clause reserved for the good years: they have not served you in their kingdom, and in your great goodness that you gave them. The failure was worst precisely when the giving was greatest.
Then the present tense, and the prayer's hardest sentence: behold, we are servants today, and as for the land that you gave to our fathers... behold, we are servants in it Nehemiah 9:36.
Servants — slaves — in their own land. The next verse itemizes it: the land's increase flows to foreign kings, they have power over our bodies and over our livestock, at their pleasure. This is the same community that rebuilt the wall in fifty-two days, feasting weeks earlier with great gladness — and its self-assessment before God is unflinching: the exile's address changed, its condition did not fully end. Walls, temple, and registers notwithstanding, the restoration remained a colony, and the prayer says so to God's face.
And then, instead of despair, a document: yet for all this, we make a sure covenant, and write it; and our princes, our Levites, and our priests, seal it Nehemiah 9:38.
Yet for all this — the logic of the whole book in four words. The history shows a cycle of forgetting; the present is bondage; therefore put it in writing and seal it. The prayer that began at creation ends with a community reaching for a pen, and the next chapter is the signature page.
settled What this mark means