[Sidenote:  Neh. 9:32-37] Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the terrible God, who keepest covenant and kindness, let not all the affliction seem little before thee, that hath come on us, on our kings, our nobles, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and on all thy people, since the days of the kings of Assyria to this day.  However thou art just in all that has come upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly, neither have our kings, our nobles, our priests, nor our fathers, kept thy law nor heeded thy commands and thy testimonies with which thou didst testify against them.  For they have not served thee in the time of their kingly rule, and in spite of thy great goodness that thou gavest them, they have not turned from their wicked deeds.  Behold, we this day are slaves, and as for the land that thou gavest to our fathers to eat its fruit and enjoy its good gifts, see we are only slaves in it.  And it yieldeth a great income to the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sin; also they have power over our bodies and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress.

[Sidenote:  Neh. 9:38] Moreover in addition to all this we made a fixed covenant and wrote it out, and our nobles, our Levites, and our priests were enrolled upon the sealed document.

[Sidenote:  Neh. 10:28-31] And all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, every one who had knowledge and insight, strongly supported their kinsmen, their nobles, and entered into a solemn obligation and took oath to walk in God’s law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commands of Jehovah our Lord, and his ordinances and his statutes; and that we would neither give our daughters to the peoples of the land nor take their daughters as wives for our sons; and that, if the peoples of the land should bring wares or any grain on the sabbath day to sell, we would not buy of them on the sabbath or on a holy day; and that on the seventh year we would leave the land uncultivated and would refrain from the exaction of any debt.

[Sidenote:  Neh. 10:32-39] We also imposed upon ourselves the obligation to give yearly the third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God, for the bread that was set forth, and for the continual burnt-offering, for the sabbaths, the new moons, the fixed feasts, and the holy things, and for the sin-offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God.  And we cast lots, the priests, the Levites, and the people, for the wood-offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our father’s houses, at appointed times year by year, to burn upon the altar of Jehovah our God, as it is prescribed in the law; and to bring the earliest products of our ground, and the first of all fruit of every kind of tree year by year, to the temple of Jehovah; also the first-born