Nehemiah 9:18-22

18 even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,’ or when they committed awful blasphemies.

19 “Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take.

20 You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst.

21 For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.

22 “You gave them kingdoms and nations, allotting to them even the remotest frontiers. They took over the country of Sihon^[a] king of Heshbon and the country of Og king of Bashan.

Nehemiah 9:18-22 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO NEHEMIAH 9

In this chapter we have an account of a fast kept by the Jews, which was observed, as by outward acts of humiliation, so by confession of sin, reading the law, and worshipping the Lord, Ne 9:1-3 and of a long prayer that the Levites made, in which they celebrate the divine perfections, take notice of various instances of the goodness of God to the people of Israel, acknowledge their manifold transgressions, observe the Lord's correction of them for them, in which they own he was righteous, Ne 9:4-38.

Cross References

• 1. S Exodus 32:4
• 2. S Exodus 20:23
• 3. Exodus 13:22
• 4. S Exodus 13:21
• 5. Numbers 9:17; Numbers 11:17; Isaiah 63:11,14; Haggai 2:5; Zechariah 4:6
• 6. Psalms 23:3; Psalms 143:10
• 7. S Exodus 16:15
• 8. Exodus 17:6
• 9. S Exodus 16:35
• 10. S Deuteronomy 2:7
• 11. S Deuteronomy 8:4
• 12. S Numbers 21:21
• 13. S Numbers 21:33; Dt 2:26-3:11

Footnotes

• [a]. One Hebrew manuscript and Septuagint; most Hebrew manuscripts "Sihon, that is, the country of the"