Bible Strands
Nehemiah 1:11
O Lord, may Your ear be attentive to my prayer and to the prayers of Your servants who delight to revere Your name. Give Your servant success this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” (At that time I was the cupbearer to the king.)
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Nehemiah, cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, addresses the Lord in the moment between his private grief over Jerusalem (ch. 1) and his public petition to the king (ch. 2). He is asking for divine favor before entering a politically dangerous room.
The words — קַשֶּׁבֶת (qashevet, H7183) is an intensive participle meaning "attentive, listening intently," a stronger posture than passive hearing. The same form recurs in Nehemiah 1:6, where Nehemiah asks God to keep His ear fixed on his day-and-night prayer.
The thread — The ear-attentive language of 1:11 echoes 1:6 and anticipates the concrete answer in 2:1, where the cupbearer's role places him directly before the king at the moment of petition. The pattern of praying before acting before a foreign ruler parallels Daniel's intercession (Dan. 9) and Esther's fast before approaching the throne (Est. 4).
Why it lands — The request is bounded: success "this day," before a specific, unnamed man. It treats prayer as a precondition to action, not a consolation after the fact.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants, who desire to fear thy name: and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. For I was the king’s cupbearer.
Cross-references
- Nehemiah 1:6 let Your eyes be open and Your ears attentive to hear the prayer that I, Your servant, now pray before You day and night for Your servants, the Israelites. I confess the sins that we Israelites have committed against You. Both I and my father’s house have sinned.
- Nehemiah 2:8 And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so that he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel to the temple, for the city wall, and for the house I will occupy.” And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.
- Nehemiah 2:1 Now in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was set before him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had never been sad in his presence,
- Proverbs 21:1 The king’s heart is a waterway in the hand of the LORD; He directs it where He pleases.
- Hebrews 13:18 Pray for us; we are convinced that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way.
- Ezra 7:6 this Ezra came up from Babylon. He was a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses, which the LORD, the God of Israel, had given. The king had granted Ezra all his requests, for the hand of the LORD his God was upon him.
- Psalms 130:2 O Lord, hear my voice; let Your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy.
- Psalms 86:6 Hear my prayer, O LORD, and attend to my plea for mercy.
- Genesis 40:21 Pharaoh restored the chief cupbearer to his position, so that he once again placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.
- Ezra 1:1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah, the LORD stirred the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia to send a proclamation throughout his kingdom and to put it in writing as follows: