And at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my heaviness; and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the LORD my God,
to rend · conjunction + preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct + pronominal suffix
garment
בִגְדִ֖יvig.Di
H899
a covering · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix
mantle
וּמְעִילִ֑יu.me.'i.Li
H4598
a robe (i.e. upper and outer garment) · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix
fell
וָֽאֶכְרְעָה֙va.'ekh.re.'Ah
H3766
to bend the knee · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular + paragogic he
knees
בִּרְכַּ֔יbir.Kai
H1290
a knee · noun, common feminine dual construct + pronominal suffix
out
וָאֶפְרְשָׂ֥הva.'ef.re.Sah
H6566
to break apart · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular + paragogic he
hands
כַפַּ֖יkha.Pai
H3709
the hollow hand or palm (so of the paw of an animal · noun, common feminine dual construct + pronominal suffix
LORD
יְהוָ֥הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
God
אֱלֹהָֽי'e.lo.Hai
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
1 Kings 8:22 And Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven:
1 Kings 8:38 What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart,…
1 Kings 8:54 And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication unto the LORD, he arose from before the altar o…
Exodus 9:29 And Moses said unto him, As soon as I am gone out of the city, I will spread abroad my hands unto the LORD; and the thunder shall cease, nei…
Exodus 9:33 And Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh, and spread abroad his hands unto the LORD: and the thunders and hail ceased, and the rain was n…
2 Chronicles 6:13 For Solomon had made a brasen scaffold, of five cubits long, and five cubits broad, and three cubits high, and had set it in the midst of th…
Psalms 95:6 O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
Psalms 141:2 Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ezra 9:5–end
What the meditations of Ezra's heart were, while for some hours he sat down astonished, we may guess by the words of his mouth when at length he spoke with his tongue; and a most pathetic address he here makes to Heaven upon this occasion. Observe,
I. The time when he made this address - at the evening sacrifice, Ezr 9:5. Then (it is likely) devout people used to come into the courts of the temple, to grace the solemnity of the sacrifice and to offer up their own prayers to God in concurrence with it. In their hearing Ezra chose to make this confession, that they might be made duly sensible of the sins of their people, which hitherto they had either not taken notice of or had made light of.…
PRAYS TO GOD. (Ezr 9:5-15)
I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God--The burden of his prayer, which was dictated by a deep sense of the emergency, was that he was overwhelmed at the flagrant enormity of this sin, and the bold impiety of continuing in it after having, as a people, so recently experienced the heavy marks of the divine displeasure. God had begun to show returning favor to Israel by the restoration of some. But this only aggravated their sin, that, so soon after their re-establishment in their native land, they openly violated the express and repeated precepts which commanded them to extirpate the Canaanites. Such conduct, he exclaimed, could issue on…
Fell upon my knees - In token of the deepest humility. Spread out my hands, as if to lay hold on the mercy of God. We have already had occasion to explain these significant acts.
John Gill on Ezra 9:5
And at the evening sacrifice I rose up from my heaviness,.... The signs and tokens of it, particularly sitting on the ground; or "from my fasting" (n), having eaten nothing that day, it being early in the morning when he was told the above case:
and having rent my garment and my mantle; which he had done before, and still kept them on him in the same case:
fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God; in the posture and with the gesture of an humble supplicant.
(n) "jejunio meo", Michaelis; so Jarchi.
The Church Fathers
And in the evening sacrifice I rose from my affliction, etc. Ezra had prepared himself through the contrition of his heart and the affliction of his body, so that he might be made worthy to hear divine compassion, and thus he broke forth into the words of prayer. He bent his knees, spread his hands, and poured out prayers to the Lord at the time of the evening sacrifice; not doubting that this sacrifice would be more pleasing to God—because it was offered in a spirit of humility and a contrite soul—than if it had been offered with the flesh and blood of sheep. Symbolically, by bending his knees with his garment rent, spreading his hands to God, and pouring out prayers and tears, he turned the minds of many to repentance, as it is written in what follows, showing the Lord Savior, who deigned to pray for our sins both before His passion and at the very time of His passion; and who, with His hands extended on the cross, willed the garment of His flesh to be torn and mortified with wounds for our restoration, so that He, as the Apostle says, who died for our sins, might rise for our justification (Rom. 4). This was suitably done at the time of the evening sacrifice, either because the Lord, at the end of the world, offered the sacrifice of His flesh and blood to the Father and commanded us to offer it in bread and wine; or because, with the completion of the legal sacrifice, He freed us by His passion and, separating us from the peoples of the earth, made us heavenly, and granted that we might cling to Him with pure heart and body. The prayer itself, by which he, though just, associated himself with the sinful people, saying:
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Confession — (1) An open profession of faith (Luke 12:8). (2.) An acknowledment of sins to God (Lev. 16:21; Ezra 9:5-15; Dan. 9:3-12), and to a neighbour whom we have wronged (James 5:16; Matt. 18:15).
Mantle — (1.) Heb. ‘addereth, a large over-garment. This word is used of Elijah’s mantle (1 Kings 19:13, 19; 2 Kings 2:8, 13, etc.), which was probably a sheepskin. It appears to have been his only garment, a…
Prayer — Is converse with God; the intercourse of the soul with God, not in contemplation or meditation, but in direct address to him. Prayer may be oral or mental, occasional or constant, ejaculatory or…
Daily Sacrifice, The · Times of offering, were seasons of prayer — Times of offering, were seasons of prayer
Evening, The · Humiliation often continued until — Humiliation often continued until
Garments · Often rent in affliction — Often rent in affliction
Rending · .Of garments, an outward sign of affliction — .Of garments, an outward sign of affliction
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Keil & Delitzsch on Ezra 9:5–end
Ezra's prayer and confession for the congregation. - Ezr 9:5 And at the time of the evening sacrifice, I rose up from my mortification (תּענית, humiliation, generally through fasting, here through sitting motionless in deep affliction of soul), and rending my garment and my mantle. These words contribute a second particular to קמתּי, and do not mean that Ezra arose with his garments torn, but state that, on arising, he rent his clothing, and therefore again manifested his sorrow in this manner. He then fell on his knees, and spread out his hands to God (comp. Kg1 8:22), to make a confession of the heavy guilt of the congregation before God, and thus impressively to set their sins before all…
