Also our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law, nor listened to your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them.
Parallel translations
- KJV Neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept thy law, nor hearkened unto thy commandments and thy testimonies, wherewith thou didst testify against them.
- BSB Our kings and leaders and priests and fathers did not obey Your law or listen to Your commandments and warnings that You gave them.
- NKJV Neither our kings nor our princes, Our priests nor our fathers, Have kept Your law, Nor heeded Your commandments and Your testimonies, With which You testified against them.
- NASB “For our kings, our leaders, our priests, and our fathers have not kept Your Law Or paid attention to Your commandments and Your admonitions with which You have admonished them.
- NLT Our kings, leaders, priests, and ancestors did not obey your Law or listen to the warnings in your commands and laws.
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 admit their kings, princes, priests, and fathers all failed to keep God's law and warnings. It matters because the confession spans every level of leadership and society.
Overview
No class is exempt: rulers, priests, and ancestors alike disregarded God's law and testimonies. The sin was comprehensive, implicating leaders especially. This thorough confession underscores that all have sinned and fallen short (Romans 3:23), and that the only sufficient leader, priest, and king is Christ, who perfectly obeyed God's law.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 5
- Jer 29:19because they have not listened to my words,” says Yahweh, “with which I sent to them my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but you would not hear,” says Yahweh.
- 2 Kgs 17:13Yet Yahweh testified to Israel, and to Judah, by every prophet, and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets.”
- Deut 31:21It will happen, when many evils and troubles have come on them, that this song will testify before them as a witness; for it will not be forgotten out of the mouths of their descendants; for I know their ways and what they are doing today, before I have brought them into the land which I swore.”
- Neh 9:30Yet many years you put up with them, and testified against them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet would they not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.
- 2 Kgs 17:15They rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified to them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom Yahweh had commanded them that they should not do like them.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 9:34 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
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