Nehemiah 1 is the first chapter of the Book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, or the 11th chapter of the book of Ezra-Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible, which treats the book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah as one book. Jewish tradition states that Ezra is the author of Ezra-Nehemiah as well as the Book of Chronicles, but modern scholars generally accept that a compiler from the 5th century BCE (the so-called "Chronicler") is the final author of these books. This chapter describes Nehemiah's position in the Persian court and his piety.
 This chapter is divided into 11 verses. The original text of this chapter is in  Hebrew language.
 Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text, which includes Codex Leningradensis (1008).
 There is also a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint, made in the last few centuries BCE. Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus (B; 
  
    
      
        
          
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B; 4th century), Codex Sinaiticus (S; BHK: 
  
    
      
        
          
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S; 4th century), and Codex Alexandrinus (A; 
  
    
      
        
          
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A; 5th century).
 This part opens the memoirs (chapter 1–8) of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah, who works in Persia as a court official but worries about the welfare of fellow Jews living in Jerusalem at the time. The first few verses of this chapter indicate the focus of the whole book of Nehemiah, starting by the introduction of the problem, that is, the "sad state of Jerusalem", followed by the solutions of this problem in the next chapters and the effects on the community in general.

 The news of the state of Jerusalem troubled Nehemiah partly because of the 'shame' (reproach; herpa) of this circumstance ("on taunts of foreigners", Psalm 69:20, 21; 71:13; 89:51; 119:22; Isaiah 51:7; Jeremiah 51:51; Lamentations 3:61; Zephaniah 2:8), but perhaps because he is surprised that 'the walls are still down, even after the temple has been rebuilt'.
 Nehemiah was passionate for the glory of God, so even while driven by empathy, before he formulated any plan, his first response was to pray to God. Eight times in his prayer, Nehemiah uses the term servant to refer himself, the Jewish people or Moses, also to begin and to close his prayer, showing his 'reverential submission' to God. Nehemiah's confession and petition reflects the whole Deuteronomic law, as he patterns his wordings after a condensed version of Deuteronomy 30 about God's curses and blessings, trusting God's promise to gather his people when they return to God. This prayer consists of five portions:
 There are similarities with the prayer of Ezra In particular, it has a close resemblance to the prayer of Daniel (Daniel 9:4–19), such as: the opening words in Nehemiah 1:5 are almost word for word the same as in Daniel 9:4, with the only variations being 'Adonai' for 'YHWH' and the additional title 'God of heaven'.