Thou, even thou, art LORD alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee.
Thou, even thou, art Lord alone ... In this solemn and impressive prayer, in which they made public confession of their sins, and deprecated the judgments due to the transgressions of their fathers, they begin with a profound adoration of God, whose supreme majesty and omnipotence is acknowledged in the creation, preservation, and government of all, and then they proceed to enumerate His mercies and distinguished favours to them as a nation, from the period of the call of their great ancestor, and the gracious promise intimated to him in the divinely bestowed name of Abraham-a premise which implied that he was to be the Father of the faithful, the ancestor of the Messiah, and the honoured individual in whose seed all the families of the earth should be blessed.
Tracing in full and minute detail the signal instances of divine interposition for their deliverance and their interest; in their deliverance from Egyptian bondage; their miraculous passage through the Red Sea; the promulgation of His law (for the whole form of national government, civil, or ecclesiastical, with all its ordinances, proceeded directly from God) in His, 'making known to them His holy Sabbaths,' which, from the usage of Scripture writers, does not mean a first announcement (cf. 1 Chronicles), but the formal republication of the Sabbatic law, which, to the degraded serfs from the house of bondage, would be absolutely necessary х wª'et (H853) shabat (H7676) qaadªshekaa (H6944) howda`taa (H3045) laahem (H3807a), and madest them, attend to, observe thy holy Sabbaths, Gesenius]; in the forbearance and long-suffering shown them amid their frequent rebellions; the signal triumphs given them over their enemies; their happy settlement in the promised land-and all the extraordinary blessings, both in the form of temporal prosperity and of religious privilege, with which His paternal goodness had favoured them above all other people-they charge themselves with making a miserable requital; confess their numerous and determined acts of disobedience; read in the loss of their national independence and their long captivity the severe punishment of their sins; acknowledge that, in all the heavy and continued judgments upon their nation, God had done rightly (Neh. 16:8; Psalms 145:12; Ephesians 6:19), but they had done wickedly; and in throwing themselves on His mercy, express their purpose of entering into a national covenant, by which they pledge themselves to dutiful obedience in future.