11 O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants who delight to fear thy name; and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. Now I was the king's cupbearer.
And it came to pass in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, [that] wine was before him, and I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now, I had never been sad in his presence.
Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, to hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee at this time, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servants, confessing the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father's house have sinned.
and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the palace which [appertains] to the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. And the king granted me, according to the good hand of my God upon me.
Pray for us: for we persuade ourselves that we have a good conscience, in all things desirous to walk rightly.
Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O Jehovah, have we waited for thee; the desire of [our] soul is to thy name, and to thy memorial. With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
The king's heart in the hand of Jehovah is [as] brooks of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.
Because they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of Jehovah;
Give ear, O Jehovah, unto my prayer, and attend to the voice of my supplications.
Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he come and smite me, [and] the mother with the children.
Blessed be Jehovah the God of our fathers, who has put [such a thing] as this in the king's heart, to beautify the house of Jehovah which is at Jerusalem; and has extended mercy to me before the king and his counsellors, and before all the king's mighty princes. And I was strengthened, as the hand of Jehovah my God was upon me; and I gathered together out of Israel chief men to go up with me.
-- this Ezra went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which Jehovah the God of Israel had given. And the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of Jehovah his God upon him.
And in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of Jehovah by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, Jehovah stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, and he made a proclamation throughout his kingdom, and also in writing, saying,
Then spoke the chief of the cup-bearers to Pharaoh, saying, I remember mine offences this day.
But the chief of the cup-bearers did not remember Joseph, and forgot him.
Then the chief of the cup-bearers told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, In my dream, behold, a vine was before me; and in the vine were three branches; and it was as though it budded: its blossoms shot forth, its clusters ripened into grapes. And Pharaoh's cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand. And Joseph said to him, This is the interpretation of it: the three branches are three days. In yet three days will Pharaoh lift up thy head and restore thee to thy place, and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his cup-bearer.
And Pharaoh was wroth with his two chamberlains -- with the chief of the cup-bearers and with the chief of the bakers;
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Nehemiah 1
Commentary on Nehemiah 1 Matthew Henry Commentary
An Exposition, With Practical Observations, of
The Book of Nehemiah
Chapter 1
Here we first meet with Nehemiah at the Persian court, where we find him,
Such is the rise of this great man, by piety, not by policy.
Neh 1:1-4
What a tribe Nehemiah was of does nowhere appear; but, if it be true (which we are told by the author of the Maccabees, 2 Mac. 1:18) that he offered sacrifice, we must conclude him to have been a priest. Observe,
Neh 1:5-11
We have here Nehemiah's prayer, a prayer that has reference to all the prayers which he had for some time before been putting up to God day and night, while he continued his sorrows for the desolations of Jerusalem, and withal to the petition he was now intending to present to the king his master for his favour to Jerusalem. We may observe in this prayer,