However You are just in all that has befallen us; For You have dealt faithfully, But we have done wickedly.
Parallel translations
- WEB However you are just in all that has come on us; for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly.
- KJV Howbeit thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly:
- BSB You are just in all that has befallen us, because You have acted faithfully, while we have acted wickedly.
- NASB “However, You are righteous in everything that has happened to us; For You have dealt faithfully, but we have acted wickedly.
- NLT Every time you punished us you were being just. We have sinned greatly, and you gave us only what we deserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
They confess that God is just in all that has befallen them, for he acted faithfully while they did wickedly. It matters because true repentance vindicates God and accepts blame.
Overview
The people declare God righteous in his judgments and themselves guilty, a key mark of genuine confession. They do not accuse God but justify him and condemn their own sin. This honest acknowledgment of guilt and God's justice is exactly the disposition the gospel meets with grace, as God justifies the ungodly through Christ (Romans 3:26).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Dan 9:5–14we have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from your precepts and from your ordinances;
- Gen 18:25Be it far from you to do things like that, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be like the wicked. May that be far from you. Shouldn’t the Judge of all the earth do right?”
- Ps 106:6We have sinned with our fathers. We have committed iniquity. We have done wickedly.
- Job 34:23For he doesn’t need to consider a man further, that he should go before God in judgment.
- Ps 145:17Yahweh is righteous in all his ways, and gracious in all his works.
- Jer 12:1You are righteous, Yahweh, when I contend with you; yet I would reason the cause with you: why does the way of the wicked prosper? why are all they at ease who deal very treacherously?
- Lam 1:18“Yahweh is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment. Please hear all you peoples, and see my sorrow. My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity.
- Job 33:27He sings before men, and says, ‘I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it didn’t profit me.
- Ps 119:137You are righteous, Yahweh. Your judgments are upright.
- Lev 26:40–41“‘If they confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me, and also that, because they walked contrary to me,
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The rebuilt walls and renewed covenant community foreshadow the greater builder who gathers and secures a people for God, the one who declares 'I will build my church.'
How Nehemiah 9:33 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.