Rashi
Jewish
1040–1105
“if your exile is like the matter that is stated (Deut. 30:4): “If your exile is at the end of the heavens, etc.””
The interpretation timeline
Neh 1:9
How this passage has been read — the sources, oldest to newest.
From the early Church Fathers to now.
1 Jewish · 1 Reformed · 1 Catholic
Neh 1:9 · Douay-Rheims
“But if you return to me, and keep my commandments, and do them, though you should be led away to the uttermost parts of the world, I will gather you from thence, and bring you back to the place which I have chosen for my name to dwell there.”
Scholastic
c. 1100 – 1500
1105
A.D.
666 years pass — nothing from this stretch is hosted yet
Post-Reformation
c. 1650 – 1900
1771
A.D.
John Gill
Reformed
1697–1771
“But if ye return unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them,.... Return by repentance, and, as a proof of the genuineness of it, yield obedience to the commands of God, and continue therein: though there were of you cast out unto the uttermost part of the heaven; that is, the uttermost parts of the earth, the most distant regions; so called, because at the extreme parts of the horizon, according to our apprehension, the heavens and earth touch each other; so that what is the uttermost part of the one is supposed to be of the other: yet will I gather them from thence and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there; that is to Jerusalem where the temple was built, and his name was called upon.”
1849
A.D.
George Leo Haydock
Catholic
1774–1849
“World. Literally, “of heaven, or the sky,” (Haydock) which seems to the vulgar (Calmet) to rest upon the horizon. (Tirinus) See Deuteronomy xxx. 4.”
Modern · 1953 →
The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.