Thou art the Same, thou alone, Jehovah, who hast made the heaven of heavens, and all their host, the earth and all that is therein, the seas and all that is therein. And thou quickenest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee.
Before a single sin is named, the Levites name God. The confession opens not with Israel's failure but with the One they had failed — the LORD alone, Maker and Keeper of everything, worshipped by the host of heaven.
The order is deliberate. Standing in sackcloth and dust, the people begin by looking up, and only then look at themselves.
And as the remnant stand up to bless the Lord "with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads," God leads them to speak a wonderful sevenfold praise. It brings God before the soul in the majesty of His Being and the greatness of His ways. And clearly such a view of God in His glory and grace is needed for true confession. For only as we have God before our souls can we truly estimate the seriousness of our failure.
Where the ESV reads "you alone," other translations render the words "You are the Same, You alone, Jehovah." One writer follows that name back to Deuteronomy and forward to Christ.
In Revelation 1:17 He says, "Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one." That leaves us in no doubt about who "THE SAME" of the Old Testament is. We find Him first named so in Deuteronomy 32:39: "See now that I, even I am the Same, and there is no god with Me… I lift up My hand to heaven, and say, I live forever!" "I am He" should read "I am the Same," meaning the self-existing One.
Because He never changes, the confession has firm ground under it. Whatever shifted in Israel, nothing had shifted in God.
God is acknowledged as unchanging and eternal… Times, seasons, circumstances and people all change. But in the Lord we have One who knows no change and will never pass away. As we read in another Scripture, "You remain" and "You are the Same" (Heb. 1).
The Levites do not say a creator exists. They say the LORD Himself is that Creator. One writer presses how much rides on that difference.
They adore Him as the Creator. They do not merely recognise that God is a Creator; they confess that JEHOVAH was the CREATOR… The difference is important. Many, for example, are willing to admit that God was the Creator. Yet they would hesitate to confess of the Lord Jesus Christ that "all things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made." The natural man might admit the first; but only a true believer could confess the second.
Making is only half of it. The verse adds that God keeps everything He made. That ends any claim to human independence.
Men delight in the thought that they are independent of God, but it is a delusion. They are not independent, for in Him we live and move and have our being. He is the faithful Creator, giving to all life and breath, and all things. His mercies preserve us. Every breath of our nostrils and every beat of our feeble hearts is by God's power and ordering.
The "host of heaven" are the angels. Their name itself says what they are.
It must be enough for us to note that these beings are Jehovah's messengers — that is what their name means in both Hebrew and Greek. They are the "mighty ones who do His word, obeying the voice of His word" (Ps. 103:20). It is their happy privilege to worship and to serve. In some sense they answer to the priestly worship and Levitical service of God's people on earth.
Worship rises to the measure of what God has shown. The Levites worshipped by the light they had; we have been shown far more.
Their worship matched the revelation of God they lived by. If we read Ephesians 1:3-7, we find the Apostle worshipping in the light of the revelation that has reached us in Christ… The Levites of Nehemiah's day could not anticipate the things made known to us.
- Alone He is. "You alone" carries the sense of "the Same" — the self-existing One who never changes. So the ground of confession never moves.
- Alone He made. Not a distant creator: the LORD Himself made heaven, earth and seas. Anyone may admit a Creator, but only a believer confesses Christ as Maker of all.
- Alone He keeps. He preserves them all. Every breath and heartbeat is His ordering, so human independence is a delusion.
- Heaven bows. The angels' privilege is to worship and to serve, obeying the voice of His word — worship the earth is invited to echo.
- So we confess. Praise comes first, then the honest naming of failure. We measure our sin against this God, and we praise Him in the light of all that Christ has revealed.
Thou art the Same, Jehovah Elohim, who didst choose Abram and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of Abraham;
Nehemiah 9 records a long public confession, and the Levites open it with God Himself rather than with Israel's sins. Verse 7 names three acts of God — He chose, He brought out, He named — and each one presses the question: why Abram?
Two strands run side by side through the prayer this verse belongs to:
The reader will notice that this outpouring of their hearts before God retells God's ways of grace with His people. With it goes the confession of their own continual sin and hardness of heart. On God's part there had been nothing but grace, mercy, and patience, and on their part nothing but sinful ingratitude and rebellion. So they justified Him and condemned themselves. That is the sure mark of a work of grace in repentance, whether in the hearts of saints or sinners.
The Levites list what they acknowledge in God, and this verse supplies one item on that list:
God is owned as Sovereign. He chooses whom He will. He calls Abram out of Ur, and He changes his name (7).
Readers naturally ask why Abram and not someone else:
Why should God have called Abram? The only answer that can be given is that God chose to do so in His sovereign will.
Ur was no neutral starting point. Even the family line God had marked out for blessing had turned to idols:
God had already marked off a certain part of the sons of Noah as preserved for blessing, and Shem in particular. Yet here too was the solemn fact that the family of Shem had gone into idolatry no less than others. Despite the purpose God had foretold, Shem's sons had proved unfaithful. What could be done next? Was there no way of securing God's honour? This was the way: the call of God goes out in sovereign grace. It separates to Himself a man no better than his fellows, a man openly caught up in the idolatries of his fathers.
Genesis introduces Abram when he is already on the move. So when did God first speak to him? This verse helps answer that:
To Abraham He spoke directly. He spoke first in Ur of the Chaldees, as Stephen says (Acts 7:2), and Genesis 15:7 and Nehemiah 9:7 support that. He spoke again in Haran (Genesis 12:1), telling him to go to a land which He would show him. Abraham obeyed, and went out, not knowing where he was going (Hebrews 11:8). God's word was, however, enough.
God gave the new name when He made His covenant with Abraham. The name carried a promise that nothing in his circumstances yet backed up:
In confirmation of this covenant God changed Abram's name to Abraham, which means "Father of a multitude." From this point on the new name is used, though as yet the promise contained in the name had received no fulfilment. So God pledged Himself to bring it to pass in His own way.
The act of naming carries its own weight in Scripture:
There is another element here, one that carries the same sense elsewhere in Scripture: God gives a name to Abram, and to Sarai also. A name given this way marks the right of direct authority, and entering into relationship on that ground.
The people reciting this verse had a history with idols of their own:
Verse 6 has insisted that God is Creator. That is a very real reason for Israel to judge their sins before Him, but verses 7 and 8 give a further serious reason. God had chosen their father Abram and called him from Ur of the Chaldees. He changed his name to Abraham, to make him the father of a special nation, Israel, the nation God set apart. God had called him out from a land of idol worshippers. So even a partial return to idols on Israel's part was an insult to God.
- Chose — Abram was no better than his neighbours; the reason for the call lies in God's sovereign will alone, not in the man.
- Brought out — the call separated him from a family and a city given over to false gods. God spoke first in Ur, and His word alone was enough to move him.
- Gave the name — "father of a multitude," given while the promise was still unfulfilled. The new name was God pledging Himself to make it true.
- Confessed — the Levites justify God and condemn themselves, the sure mark of real repentance.
- Applied — God called their father out of idolatry, so Israel's every drift back to idols insulted Him.