Yesterday, we saw that the first part of the Levites’ prayer praised God as the Creator.
2. A review of Israel’s history (vv. 7-31). The second, major part of the Levites’ prayer is a review of Israel’s history. It begins with God’s calling of Abraham (vv. 7-8), as Genesis does. The people must have been thinking about the actual text of Genesis at this time, for Nehemiah 9:7 contains the only Old Testament reference after Genesis to the changing of Abraham’s name from Abram to Abraham (cf. Gen. 17:5). The name change calls attention to the unilateral way in which God dealt with Abraham, a point made repeatedly throughout this section. Notice that God is the subject of every action. But unlike God, who kept His promises, the people (so it is implied) did not keep theirs. God was utterly faithful; they were not.
The next paragraph recounts the events of the Exodus in brief form (vv. 9-12), and again God is the subject of each action. In recounting God’s acts, the words also reveal God’s attributes. They show that He is omniscient (“You saw [our] sufferings”), all-powerful (“You sent miraculous signs and wonders against Pharaoh”), righteous (“You hurled their pursuers into the depths”) and merciful, since this is an account of deliverance.
The next paragraph retells the giving of the Mosaic Law at Sinai, the preservation of the people during their passage through the wilderness, and the command to enter and possess the Promised Land (vv. 13-15). In these verses there is an emphasis, as above, on God’s sovereign activity. The text stresses the justice of God’s commands and God’s goodness. These characteristics place the rebellion described in the next verses in a proper light. The people rebelled against God, and it was both wrong (it was against God’s righteous commands) and ungrateful (it was against God’s goodness). The verses that come next describe the rebellion of the people for the first time explicitly, and they also contain these two elements. On the one side, the prayer is unstinting in its honest description of the people’s rebellious attitude and sin. Their forefathers: 1) “became arrogant” and 2) “stiff-necked,” 3) “did not obey (God’s] commands,” 4) “refused to listen,” 5) “failed to remember the miracles,” and 6) “appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery.” On the other side, God behaved as “a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” This verse is a direct quotation from Exodus 34:5-7, showing that the people had remembered it also from the earlier reading. (The same verses are quoted in Jonah 4:2). God was slow to anger even when the people “cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt’” (v.18). The same theme continues in the next paragraph (vv. 19-21), which recounts how God sustained the people during their forty years of wilderness wandering.
So also when they eventually entered the Promised Land (vv. 22-25). God drove out many enemies, caused them to increase in numbers, gave them fortified cities, fertile land and homes with “wells already dug, vineyards, olive groves and fruit trees.” The people “reveled in [God’s] great goodness.”
Yet they turned from God again. The next three paragraphs (vv. 26-31) describe what became a sad but steady pattern in the nation’s life. There was increasing sin and rebellion, followed by God’s disciplinary judgments, followed by a temporary return to God, followed by more rebellion, sin and apostasy. The list of Israel’s sins grows very specific in these paragraphs, as all true confession of sin must. Yet alongside this swelling cacophony of rebellious voices, God continued to speak quietly and show mercy. The last line says, “But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God” (v. 31).