Texts in Conversation
Nehemiah describes a prayer where the speaker confesses the sins of Israel, including his own family, using the formula “we have sinned.” Baruch uses the same confession, placing communal guilt and a plea for forgiveness at the center of its appeal.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Nehemiah 1:6
Hebrew Bible
4 When I heard these things I sat down abruptly, crying and mourning for several days. I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. 5 Then I said, “Please, O Lord God of heaven, great and awesome God, who keeps his loving covenant with those who love him and obey his commandments, 6 may your ear be attentive and your eyes be open to hear the prayer of your servant that I am praying to you today throughout both day and night on behalf of your servants the Israelites. I am confessing the sins of the Israelites that we have committed against you—both I myself and my family have sinned. 7 We have behaved corruptly against you, not obeying the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments that you commanded your servant Moses. 8 Please recall the word you commanded your servant Moses: ‘If you act unfaithfully, I will scatter you among the nations.
Date: 400–301 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Baruch 1:17
Deuterocanon
15 You shall say: To the Lord our God belongs righteousness, but to us confusion of face, as at this day—to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 16 to our kings, to our princes, to our priests, to our prophets, and to our fathers, 17 because we have sinned before the Lord. 18 We have disobeyed him and have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the commandments of the Lord that he has set before us. 19 Since the day that the Lord brought our fathers out of the land of Egypt to this present day, we have been disobedient to the Lord our God, and we have been negligent in not listening to his voice.
Date: 200–50 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... we need to recall that the prayer texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls are remarkably fragmentary: most preserve only a tiny proportion of the content of the prayer. Second, the “we have sinned” formula is not universal in penitential prayers: it does not occur in either Nehemiah 9 or Ezra 9. Instead, the formulations in these prayers are, “they acted presumptuously and stiffened their necks and did not obey your commandments; they refused to obey ... they were disobedient and rebelled ... they sinned” (Nehemiah 9:16–17, 26, 29); “we are in great guilt ... we have abandoned your commandments” (Ezra 9:7, 10). In the other penitential prayers, the formulation involving “we sinned” takes various forms, either a single verb (Nehemiah 1:6, 7; Prayer of Azaria 1:6; Baruch 1:17–18) or multiple verbs (Daniel 9:5, 15; Psalm 106:6; Baruch 2:12), reflecting such formulations as Leviticus 16; 1 Kings 8:47; 2 Chronicles 6:37 ..."
Daniel K. Falk, “Scriptural Inspiration for Penitential Prayer in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Seeking the Favor of God, ed. Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney A. Werline, EJL 21 (Atlanta: SBL, 2006), 1:127–157.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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