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: 4th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Baruch 1:17
Deuterocanon
15 And you shall say: The Lord our God is in the right, but there is open shame on us today, on the people of Judah, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 16 and on our kings, our rulers, our priests, our prophets, and our ancestors, 17 because we have sinned before the Lord. 18 We have disobeyed him, and have not heeded the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the statutes of the Lord that he set before us. 19 From the time when the Lord brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt until today, we have been disobedient to the Lord our God, and we have been negligent, in not heeding his voice.
Date: 150-100 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
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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 ..."
Falk, Daniel K.
"Scriptural Inspiration for Penitential Prayer in the Dead Sea Scrolls" in Boda, Mark J., et al. (eds.) Seeking the Favor of God
(pp. 127-157) Society of Biblical Literature, 2006
* 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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