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Ezra and Nehemiah: An Introduction and Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

“The chequered story of the Kings, a matter of nearly five centuries, had ended disastrously in 587 B.C. with the sack of Jerusalem, the fall of the monarchy and the removal to Babylonia of all that made Judah politically viable. It was a death to make way for a rebirth.” So begins Derek Kidner in this introduction and commentary to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah which chart the Jews’ return from...

4, 5. This sudden prayer, quite unannounced (in spite of GNB), transports the reader back to the very moment of dismay, as if this were an extract from the day’s record, simply copied as it stood. Even if it is a more distant recollection, Nehemiah is immersed again in the experience as he writes. It is a prayer like many another in the psalms and especially Jeremiah (e.g. Ps. 123 with the chilling experience of contempt; Jer. 18:23 among others with the demand for retribution).23 It is not certain
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