For they all made us afraid, saying, Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it will not be done. Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.
Read Chapter 6
Bede
AD 735
The enemies of the holy city are urging Nehemiah to go down to the plains and to enter into a peace pact with them by together slaughtering calves as testimony to the arranged treaty, but he perseveres in the mountains so that the devout work is not neglected. So too, heretics and false catholics want to have a fellowship of peace with true catholics but with this stipulation, that they do not agree to ascend to the citadel of ecclesiastical faith or duty themselves but rather they compel those whom they see dwelling on the peak of the virtues to go down to the lowest depths of wicked works or dogmas. And it is well that they want to enter into a pact with Nehemiah on one plain, doubtless because they desire that all those whom they are able to seduce be relaxed in the same freedom of the broader life that they themselves follow; and it is well that they wish to enter into a pact with him by together slaughtering calves, because false brothers are eager to offer the sacrifices of their...
And Ezra said, 'You yourself, Oh Lord, you alone made the heaven, the heaven of heavens, and all their host, the earth and all that is on it, and so on up until the end of his prayer or confession. It was said above that they were confessing their sins and the sins of their fathers; here, when Ezra prays, it is shown more fully how this was done. But where he says at the end,
