Ezra 9 6

Ezra 9:6 kjv

And said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens.

Ezra 9:6 nkjv

And I said: "O my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to You, my God; for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens.

Ezra 9:6 niv

and prayed: "I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.

Ezra 9:6 esv

saying: "O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.

Ezra 9:6 nlt

I prayed, "O my God, I am utterly ashamed; I blush to lift up my face to you. For our sins are piled higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens.

Ezra 9 verses

Ezra 9 6 Meaning

Ezra 9:6 expresses Ezra's profound personal shame and humiliation before God over the rampant iniquities and guilt of the Israelite community. He confesses that their sins have become so overwhelmingly vast and weighty that they have drowned the people and risen to the very heavens, calling down divine attention and judgment. This highlights the severe moral decay and the deep affront to God's holiness caused by their covenant violations.

Ezra 9 6 Context

Ezra chapter 9 begins with leaders informing Ezra, the priest and scribe, that the returned exiles – including priests and Levites – have not kept themselves separate from the surrounding pagan peoples, particularly by taking wives from them. This violated explicit Mosaic commands (e.g., Deut 7:1-6, Exod 34:15-16) designed to preserve Israel's covenant purity and distinct identity. Upon hearing this, Ezra reacts with extreme sorrow and lament: he tears his garments, pulls out his hair and beard, and sits utterly distraught until the evening offering. Verse 6 is the beginning of his prayer of profound corporate confession and intercession to God, delivered in a posture of humility and grief, representing the people before their righteous God. The historical context is critical: Israel had just returned from a devastating Babylonian exile, understood as divine punishment for centuries of disobedience, including idol worship and covenant breaking. This intermarriage issue threatened to plunge the fragile, restored community back into the very sins that led to their initial downfall, making Ezra's anguish particularly acute as he perceived a repeat of history's bitter lessons.

Ezra 9 6 Word analysis

• And said: Signifies Ezra's utterance, arising from deep inner turmoil.
• O my God: (ʼElōhāy) A personal and intimate address. The possessive suffix indicates a deep, established relationship with God, intensifying the confession's gravity. It highlights the direct affront to the very God with whom he has a covenant.
• I am ashamed: (bosh - בּוֹשׁ) Denotes profound personal humiliation, distress, and confusion. It implies an internal sense of disgrace, an inability to look others, or God, in the eye. It's more than embarrassment; it's a deep awareness of moral unworthiness.
• and blush: (chafer - חָפֵר) Implies covering one's face or shrinking back due to shame or disappointment. Often connected with having expectations disappointed, particularly the hope in something vain. Here, the vain hope of purity. It's the physical manifestation of shame.
• to lift up my face: A posture of confidence and honor. To be unable to lift one's face signifies immense guilt, disgrace, and a feeling of being unworthy to stand in God's presence or even approach Him. In biblical culture, it's a loss of all dignity and honor.
• to You, my God: Reinforces the personal nature of the offense and the one against whom the sin has been committed. The reiteration of "my God" underscores Ezra's personal grief over a covenant broken not just by others, but deeply affecting his own standing before the holy God he serves.
• for our iniquities: (ʻāvōn - עֲוֺן) From the root avah, meaning "to bend, twist, or distort." This refers to moral perversity, deviation from God's straight path, and the crookedness of human actions. It encompasses both the act of sin and its guilt/consequences. The plural "our" emphasizes the corporate nature of the sin.
• have risen higher: (gāvah - גָּבַהּ) Means to be high, exalted, lifted up. Here, used metaphorically to describe the overwhelming and increasing quantity of sin, implying it has become insurmountable, like floodwaters that drown.
• than our heads: Evokes an image of being submerged, overwhelmed, or drowned by the vastness and weight of their transgressions, beyond their capacity to cope or escape.
• and our guilt: (ashmāh - אַשְׁמָה) Refers to trespass, culpability, or the actual offense and its consequences, leading to an incurring of punishment. It emphasizes legal or covenantal liability.
• has mounted up: (nāsaq - נָסַק) Means to ascend, climb up, go up. It suggests an active upward movement, portraying sin as an entity actively growing and accumulating.
• to the heavens: (shamāyim) The abode of God, the place from which divine judgment emanates. This imagery highlights that their sin is not just a terrestrial offense but has reached God's immediate attention and demands a divine response. It also evokes a challenge to God's cosmic order.

Words-group analysis:

• "O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to You, my God": This opening conveys a deeply personal and physically manifested anguish stemming from Ezra's overwhelming sense of dishonor and unworthiness to approach a holy God due to the widespread national apostasy. His physical posture of not being able to look up embodies total spiritual defeat and brokenness.
• "for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads": This vivid metaphor portrays sin as a colossal flood overwhelming the people, engulfing them entirely. It emphasizes the collective burden and inescapable nature of their accumulated transgressions, depicting them as drowning in their own perversity.
• "and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens": This dramatic hyperbole stresses the immense vertical dimension and cosmic scope of their offenses. Their collective culpability is so vast and audacious that it challenges the very dwelling place of God, provoking His righteous wrath and demanding immediate divine recognition and justice.

Ezra 9 6 Bonus section

• Ezra's prayer, starting with verse 6, shares striking parallels in both content and posture with other post-exilic prayers of confession, particularly Nehemiah 9 and Daniel 9. This highlights a collective consciousness among the returning exiles of their past national failures and the constant need for repentance in their restored covenant relationship with God.
• The profound shame expressed by Ezra is rooted in his understanding of the holy covenant and the severity of Israel's repeated breaches. This deep shame reflects God's own lament over Israel's rebellion, showcasing a leader whose heart beats in rhythm with divine sorrow.
• The specific violation (intermarriage) directly contradicted commands designed to keep Israel holy and distinct among the nations, thus threatening the very purpose of their return and rebuilding. The imagery of sin "reaching to the heavens" not only implies magnitude but also directly evokes divine notice and the imminence of judgment, akin to the sin of Sodom (Gen 18:20-21) or Babel (Gen 11:4).
• Ezra’s choice to pull his hair and beard, along with tearing his clothes, was an extreme form of public lament in ancient Near Eastern culture, reserved for the deepest sorrow and distress, signifying spiritual shock and utter despair over the state of the people. This outward display underscores the intensity of the "shame" and "blushing" he feels internally.

Ezra 9 6 Commentary

Ezra 9:6 is a deeply personal and intensely vivid corporate confession, representing Ezra's identification with the sins of his people. His choice of language paints a terrifying picture of the Israelite community submerged and consumed by their own wickedness. The "shame and blushing" speak not merely of embarrassment, but of a profound sense of defilement and dishonor before a holy God, rendering him utterly unworthy to meet God's gaze. This reflects the reality that sin pollutes the conscience and damages one's standing before the divine. The two distinct metaphors – "iniquities risen higher than our heads" and "guilt mounted up to the heavens" – are powerful, even hyperbolic. The first implies an overwhelming deluge that threatens to drown them in consequences, a burden too immense to bear. The second elevates the sin to the divine sphere, making it an open affront against the Almighty, suggesting that their transgression has reached the very throne of judgment. Ezra's prayer isn't an accusation of others but an embodying of communal guilt, a deep theological understanding that the people, as a covenant entity, are gravely accountable before God. It highlights the pervasive and accumulating nature of sin and how it affects the very existence and relationship of the covenant people with their God, demanding divine justice or mercy.

Examples:

• A leader acknowledging systemic failings or historical wrongs of a community they represent, with genuine sorrow and self-abasement.
• An individual feeling deep spiritual remorse for not just personal transgressions, but the moral failures observed in their larger community, realizing the collective impact.