Ezra 9:13

great trespass R.V. great guilt. Cf. on Ezra 9:7. Not an isolated offence, but the condition of deep obligation for sin.

seeing that thou … hast, &c. According to this rendering, Ezra asks as it were in grief and dismay, -After all that is past, shall we take advantage of God's mercy to sin yet once more and offend against His majesty?" Another rendering, more difficult but quite admissible, translates the conjunction -seeing that" (ki), as the mark of an exclamation. -After all that has happened, to think thatGod should have so spared us! shall we then provoke Him again by our disobedience?"

hast punished us less than our iniquitiesdeserve] The words in the original are difficult. Literally, -hast kept back, downward, from our sins". Some have rendered -hast as it were held back, and kept down from rising to view, many of (partitive) our sins". Others, -hast spared beneath our sins", i.e. thy mercy has been out of all proportion greater than our sins, has as it were gone deeper than our iniquities. The R.V. gives the general sense. The LXX. ἐκούφισας ἡμῶν τὰς ἀνομίας and Vulg. -liberasti nos de iniquitate nostra" are paraphrastic.

such deliverance as this R.V. such a remnant. The same word as in Ezra 9:8.