Nehemiah 1:3

1:3 They said to me, “The remnant that remains from the exile there in the province are experiencing considerable ¹  adversity and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem lies breached, and its gates have been burned down!” ² 

Nehemiah 1:1

A Prayer of Nehemiah

1:1 ³ These are the words of Nehemiah ⁴  son of Hacaliah:

It so happened that in the month of Kislev, in the twentieth year, ⁵  I was in Susa ⁶  the citadel.

Nehemiah 11:2

11:2 The people gave their blessing on all the men who volunteered to settle in Jerusalem.

Psalms 44:13

44:13 You made us ⁷  an object of disdain to our neighbors;

those who live on our borders taunt and insult us. ⁸ 

Psalms 79:4

79:4 We have become an object of disdain to our neighbors;

those who live on our borders taunt and insult us. ⁹ 

Psalms 79:12

79:12 Pay back our neighbors in full! ¹⁰ 

May they be insulted the same way they insulted you, O Lord! ¹¹ 

Psalms 89:50-51

89:50 Take note, O Lord, ¹²  of the way your servants are taunted, ¹³ 

and of how I must bear so many insults from people! ¹⁴ 

89:51 Your enemies, O Lord, hurl insults;

they insult your chosen king as they dog his footsteps. ¹⁵ 

Jeremiah 24:9

24:9 I will bring such disaster on them that all the kingdoms of the earth will be horrified. I will make them an object of reproach, a proverbial example of disaster. I will make them an object of ridicule, an example to be used in curses. ¹⁶  That is how they will be remembered wherever I banish them. ¹⁷ 

Lamentations 3:45-46

3:45 You make us like filthy scum ¹⁸ 

in the estimation ¹⁹  of the nations.

פ (Pe)

3:46 All our enemies have gloated over us; ²⁰ 

Ezekiel 5:14

5:14 “I will make you desolate and an object of scorn among the nations around you, in the sight of everyone who passes by.

Ezekiel 22:4-5

22:4 you are guilty because of the blood you shed and defiled by the idols you made. You have hastened the day of your doom; ²¹  the end of your years has come. ²²  Therefore I will make ²³  you an object of scorn to the nations, an object to be mocked by all lands. 22:5 Those both near and far from you will mock you, you with your bad reputation, ²⁴  full of turmoil.

[1:3]  ¹ tn Heb “great.”

[1:3]  ² tn Heb “have been burned with fire” (so also in Neh 2:17). The expression “burned with fire” is redundant in contemporary English; the translation uses “burned down” for stylistic reasons.

[1:1]  ³ sn In ancient Judaism Ezra and Nehemiah were regarded as a single book with dual authorship. According to the Talmud, “Ezra wrote his book” (b. Bava Batra 15a). The Gemara then asks and answers, “And who finished it? Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah.” Accordingly, the two are joined in the Leningrad Codex (ca. A.D. 1008), the manuscript upon which modern printed editions of the Hebrew Bible (e.g., BHK and BHS) are based.

[1:1]  ⁴ sn The name Nehemiah in Hebrew (נְחֶמְיָה, nÿkhemyah) means “the LORD comforts.”

[1:1]  ⁵ tn That is, the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes’ reign (cf. 2:1).

[1:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “Shushan.”

[44:13]  ⁷ tn The prefixed verbal form is a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive).

[44:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “an [object of] taunting and [of] mockery to those around us.”

[79:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “an [object of] taunting and [of] mockery to those around us.” See Ps 44:13.

[79:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “Return to our neighbors sevenfold into their lap.” The number seven is used rhetorically to express the thorough nature of the action. For other rhetorical/figurative uses of the Hebrew phrase שִׁבְעָתַיִם (shiv’atayim, “seven times”) see Gen 4:15, 24; Ps 12:6; Prov 6:31; Isa 30:26.

[79:12]  ¹¹ tn Heb “their reproach with which they reproached you, O Lord.”

[89:50]  ¹² tc Many medieval Hebrew mss read here יְהוָה (yehvah, “the Lord”).

[89:50]  ¹³ tn Heb “remember, O Lord, the taunt against your servants.” Many medieval Hebrew mss read the singular here, “your servant” (that is, the psalmist).

[89:50]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “my lifting up in my arms [or “against my chest”] all of the many, peoples.” The term רַבִּים (rabbim, “many”) makes no apparent sense here. For this reason some emend the text to רִבֵי (rivey, “attacks by”), a defectively written plural construct form of רִיב (riv, “dispute; quarrel”).

[89:51]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “[by] which your enemies, O Lord, taunt, [by] which they taunt [at] the heels of your anointed one.”

[24:9]  ¹⁶ tn Or “an object of reproach in peoples’ proverbs…an object of ridicule in people’s curses.” The alternate translation treats the two pairs which are introduced without vavs (ו) but are joined by vavs as examples of hendiadys. This is very possible here but the chain does not contain this pairing in 25:18; 29:18.

[24:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “I will make them for a terror for disaster to all the kingdoms of the earth, for a reproach and for a proverb, for a taunt and a curse in all the places which I banish them there.” The complex Hebrew sentence has been broken down into equivalent shorter sentences to conform more with contemporary English style.

[3:45]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “offscouring and refuse.” The two nouns סְחִי וּמָאוֹס (sÿkhi uma’os) probably form a nominal hendiadys, in which the first noun functions as an adjective and the second retains its full nominal sense: “filthy refuse,” i.e., “filthy scum.”

[3:45]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “in the midst of.”

[3:46]  ²⁰ tn Heb “open wide their mouths.”

[22:4]  ²¹ tn Heb “you have brought near your days.” The expression “bring near your days” appears to be an adaptation of the idiom “days draw near,” which is used to indicate that an event, such as death, is imminent (see Gen 27:41; 47:29; Deut 31:14; 1 Kgs 2:1; Ezek 12:23). Here “your days” probably refers to the days of the personified city’s life, which was about to come to an end through God’s judgment.

[22:4]  ²² tn Heb “and you have come to your years.” This appears to mean that she has arrived at the time when her years (i.e., life) would end, though it may mean that her years of punishment will begin. Because “day” and “time” are so closely associated in the immediate context (see 21:25, 29) some prefer to emend the text and read “you have brought near your time.” See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:31, as well as the translator’s note on verse 3.

[22:4]  ²³ tn The Hebrew verb is a prophetic perfect, emphasizing that the action is as good as done from the speaker’s perspective.

[22:5]  ²⁴ tn Heb “unclean of name.”