loving heavenly father thank you so much for your word and thank you for these thursday night bible studies that we can just come together

and put aside all the cares and the affairs of our busy lives and just focus our attention upon you and your word and that which you have for us and that which you desire to

minister to us. So Lord, will you speak clearly into our lives as we devote this time to you

together in your word? We pray. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, let's jump in verse one. Now,

those who place their seal on the document were Nehemiah, the governor, the son of Hakkalaia and Zedekiah, Serai, verse two, Azariah, Jeremiah,

Paschur, Amaraya, Malchija Hattush, Shabanaia, Maluch, Harim, Meramath, Obadiah, Daniel, Gennathon, Baruch,

Maschulam, Verse 7, Abijah, Mijam, Mijam, Maazaya, Belgai, and Shemaya.

These were the priests.

We're going to get a sort of a delineation of all of these who signed and sealed this oath,

this covenant, this renewed commitment, which is how the chapter begins, where the narrative had ended in the

previous chapter, this after the children of Israel, had just experienced this revival, this

renewal.

And now on the heels of this oath that they're making, they're going to seal it, and they do so in concert with

what's believed to be the longest recorded prayer in all of Scripture, which we saw and

studied in chapter 9 last week. It was a really interesting prayer. It just kind of recounted and

recalled all the grand and glorious things that God had done for his people in spite of the

disobedience of his people. We're going to see that again tonight as we get towards the end of the chapter.

So verses 1 through 8, we have this list of names. We're going to have another list of names

verses 9 through 27. And these are by name, those who sign and sealed the oath. And of course, it's under the, under Nehemiah, who is the governor.

Now, in verses 9 through 27, I'm not going to read through all of those names, unless, of course,

you want me to butcher them in trying to pronounce them but i do want to make

mention of this delineation again in verse nine through verse 13 it's the levites so we first had the

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