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to God in the last clause of v. 5: Blessed be the name of Thy glory. By these words the prayer which follows is evidently declared to be the confession of those who are to praise the glory of the Lord; and the addition, “and Ezra said,” characterized as an unskilful interpolation.
According to what has now been said, the summons, יהוה את בּרכוּ קוּמוּ, Neh 9:5, like the introductions to may Hodu and Hallelujah Psalms (e.g., Psa 105:1; Psa 106:1), is to be regarded as only an exhortation to the congregation to praise God, i.e., to join in the praises following, and to unite heartily in the confession of sin. This view of the connection of Neh 9:5 and Neh 9:6 explains the reason why it is not stated either in Neh 9:6, or at the close of this prayer in Neh 9:37, that the assembled congregation blessed God agreeably to the summons thus addressed to them. They did so by silently and heartily praying to, and praising God with the Levites, who were reciting aloud the confession of sin. On ויברכוּ R. Sal. already remarks: nunc incipiunt loqui Levitae versus Shechinam s. ad ipsum Deum. The invitation to praise God insensibly passes into the action of praising. If, moreover, vv. 6-37 are related in the manner above stated to Neh 9:5, then it is not probable that the crying to God with a loud voice (Neh 9:4) was anything else than the utterance of the prayer subsequently given, vv. 6-37. The repetition of the names in Neh 9:5 is not enough to confirm this view, but must be explained by the breadth of the representation here given, and is rescued from the charge of mere tautology by the fact that in Neh 9:4 the office of the individuals in question is not named, which it is by the word הלויּם in Neh 9:5. For הלויּם in Neh 9:4 belongs as genitive to מעלה, and both priests and laymen might have stood on the platform of the Levites. For this reason it is subsequently stated in Neh 9:5, that Jeshua, etc., were Levites; and in doing this the names are again enumerated. In the exhortation, Stand up and bless, etc., Bertheau seeks to separate “for ever and ever” from the imp. בּרכוּ, and to take it as a further qualification of אלהיכם. This is, however, unnatural and arbitrary; comp. 1Ch 16:26. Still more arbitrary is it to supply “One day all