Reformation Directory

1 The people repent, and forsake their strange wives 5 The Levites exhorte them to praise God, 6 Declaring his wonders, 26 And their ingratitude, 30 And God’s great mercies toward them.

1.In the foure & twentieth day of this ^amoneth the children of Israél were assembled with *fasting, & with sackecloth, and earth upon them.

2.(And they that were of the sede of Israél were separated from all the ^strangers) and thei stode and confessed their sinnes and the iniquities of their fathers.

3.And they stode up in their place and red in the boke of the Law of the Lord their God foure times on the day, and thei ^bconfessed and worshipped the Lord their God foure times. ah The Levites prayer.

4.Then stode up upon the staires of the Levites Jeshúa, and Baní, Kadmiél, Shebaniáh, Bunní, Sherebiáh, Baní and Chenáni, & cryed with a loude voice unto the Lord their God.

5.And the Levites said, even Jeshúa and Kadmiél, Baní, Hashabniáh, Sherebiáh, Hodijáh, Shebaniáh and Pethahiáh, Stand up, and praise the Lord your God for ever, and ever, & let them praise thy glorious Name, ô God, which excelleth above all thanksgiving and praise.

6.Thou art Lord alone: thou hast made heaven, & the heaven of all heavens, with all their hoste, the earth, & all things that are therein, the seas, & all that are in them, & thou preservest them all, & the hoste of the heaven worshipeth thee.

7.Thou art, ô Lord, the God, that hast chosen Abrám, and broghtest him out of *Ur in Caldea *and madest his name Abrahám,

8.And foundest his heart faithful before thee, *and madest a covenant with him, to give unto his sede the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, & Perizzites, and Jebusites, and Girgashites, and hast performed thy wordes, because thou art just.

9.*Thou hast also considered the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heard their crye by the red Sea,

10.And shewed tokens and wonders upon Pharaóh, and on all his servants, and on all the people of his land: for thou knewest that thei dealt proudely against them: therefore thou madest thee a Name, as appeareth this day.

11.*For thou didest breake up the Sea before them, and they went through the middes of the Sea on drye land: and those that pursued them, hast thou cast into the bottoms as a stone, in the mightie waters:

12.And *leddest them in the daye with a piller of a cloud, and in the night with a piller of frye to give them light in the way that they went.

13.*Thou camest downe also upon mount Sinái, & spakest unto them from heaven, and gavest them right judgements, and true lawes, ordinances and good commandments,

14.And declaredst unto them thine holy Sabbath, and commandedst them precepts, and ordinances, and laws, by the hand of Mosés thy servant:

15.*And gavest them bread from heaven for their hungre, *and broghtest forthe water for them out of the rock for their thirst: and *promisedst them that thei shulde go in, and take possession of the land: for the which thou haddest lift up thine hand for to give them.

16.But thei and our fathers behaved them selves proudely and hardened their necke, so that they hearkened not unto thy commmandements,

17.But refused to obey, & would not remember thy marvelous works that thou hadest done for them, but hardened their necks & had in their heads to returne to their bondage by their rebellion: but thou, ô God of mercies, gracious and ful of compassion, of long suffering and of great mercie, yet forsokest them not.

18.Moreover when they made them a molten calfe (and said, This is thy god that broght thee up out of the land of Egypt) and committed great blasphemies,

19.Yet thou for thy great mercies forsokest them not in the Nehemiah’s prayer. Nehemi wilderness: *the piller of the cloude departed not from them by day to lead them the way, neither the piller of fyre by night, to shewe them light, and the way whereby they shulde go.

20.Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not thy MAN from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst.

21.Thou didest also fede them fourtie yeres in the wilderness: thei lacked nothing: *their clothes waxed not olde, and their fete ^cswelled not.

22.And thou gavest them kingdoms & people, and ^dscatteredst them into corners: so they possessed *the land of Sihón and the land of the King of Heshbón, and the land of Og King of Bashán.

23.And thou didest multiplie their children, like the starres of the heaven, and broghtest them into the land, whereof thou hadest spoken unto their fathers, that they shulde go, and possesse it.

24.So the children went in, & possessed the land, and thou subduedst before them the inhabitants of the land, even the Canaanites, & gavest them into their hands, with their Kings & the people of the land, that they might do with them what they wolde.

25.And they toke their strong cities and the fat land, and possessed houses, full of all goods, cisterns digged out, vineyardes, and olives, and trees for food in abundance, and they did eat, and were filled, and became fat, and lived in pleasure through thy great goodness.

26.Yet they were disobedient, & rebelled against thee, and cast thy Law behinde their backs and slewe thy Prophets (which ^eprotested among them to turn them unto thee) and committed great blasphemies.

27.Therefore thou deliveredst them into the hand of their enemies that vexed them: yet in the time of their affliction, when they cryed unto thee, thou heardest them from the heaven, & through thy great mercies thou gavest them saviours, who saved them out of the hand of their adversaries.

28.But when they had ^frest, they returned to do evil before thee: therefore leftest thou them in the hand of their enemies, so that they had the dominion over them, yet when they converted & cryed unto thee, thou heardest them from heaven, and deliveredst them according to thy great mercies many times,

29.And protestedst among them that thou mightiest bring them again unto thy Law: but they behaved them selves proudely, and hearkened not unto thy commmandements, but sinned against thy judgements (*which a man shulde do and live in them) and ^gpulled away the shuldre, and were stifnecked, and wolde not ^hheare.

30.Yet thou ^didest forbeare them many yeres, and protestedst among them by thy Spirit, even by the hand of thy Prophets, but they wolde not heare: therefore gavest thou them into the hand of the people of the lands.

31.Yet for thy great mercies, thou hast not consumed them, ah The covenant sealed nether forsaken them: for thou art a gracious and merciful God.

32.Now therefore our God, *thou great God, mightie and terrible, that kepest covenant and *mercie, let not all the affliction that hath come unto us, seem a little before thee, that is, to our Kings, to our princes, and to our Priests, and to our Prophetes and to our fathers, and to all thy people since the time of the Kings of ⁱAsshúr unto this day.

33.Surely thou art just in all that is come upon us: for thou ^khast delt truly, but we have done wickedly.

34.And our Kings and our princes, our Priests and our fathers have not done thy Law, nor regarded thy commandments nor thy protestations, wherewith thou hast ^lprotested among them.

35.And they have not served thee in their kingdom, and in thy great goodness that thou shewedst unto them, and in the large and fat land which thou settest before them, and have not converted from their evil works.

36.Beholde, we are servants this day, and the land that thou gavest unto our fathers, to eat the ^mfrute thereof, and the goodness thereof, beholde, we are servants therein.

37.And it yeldeth much frute unto the Kings whom thou hast set over us, because of our sinnes: and they have dominion over our bodies and over our cattel at their pleasure, and we are in great affliction.

38.Now because of all this we make ⁿa sure covenant, and write it, and our princes, our Levites and our Priests seal unto it.

Nehemiah 9

Notes