Nehemiah 9:32

ISRAEL HAD INDEED RETURNED;

BUT THEY WERE STILL SERVANTS OF THE KINGS OF PERSIA

"Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the terrible God, who keepest covenant and lovingkindness, let not all the travail seem little before thee, that hath come upon us, upon our kings, on our princes, and on our priests, and on our prophets, and on our fathers, and on all thy people, since the time of the kings of Assyria unto this day. Howbeit thou art just in all that has come upon us; for thou hast dealt truly, but we have done wickedly; neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept thy law, nor hearkened unto thy commandments and thy testimonies wherewith thou didst testify against them. For they have not served thee in their kingdom, and in thy great goodness that thou gavest them, and in the large and fat land which thou gavest before them, neither turned they from their wicked works. Behold, we are servants this day, and as for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it. And it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sins: also they have power over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress. And yet for all this we make a sure covenant, and write it; and our princes, our Levites, and our priests, seal unto it."

Alas, for Israel, their sinful kingdom would never be restored. Their nation would continue to be subject to the Persians, to the Greeks, and then to the Romans, until the promised Messiah would suddenly appear.

God's prophets, whom they had despised and murdered and whose words they scornfully rejected, would come no more. With Zechariah and Malachi, who were contemporaries of Nehemiah, the age of the prophets terminated. They were the last of the prophets until John the Baptist, in the spirit and power of Elijah, would thunder the message from the wilderness, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of God is at hand,"

Their priesthood became more and more reprobate; and God even cursed it; and, by the times of Christ, the Temple itself had become a "den of thieves and robbers." There is no tragedy like that of Israel; and something of the infinite pathos of their judicial hardening, of their rejection and murder of the Son of God, and of God's destruction of their nation in just retribution of their wickedness - something of the pathos and tragedy of racial Israel, as distinguished from the true Israel, appears in this pitiful prayer of the Levites who tried in vain to bring the racial Israel back to God.