Discovery BoxNehemiah 2:10 
Context2:10 When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official 1 heard all this, they were very displeased that someone had come to seek benefit for the Israelites.
Nehemiah 3:3
Context3:3 The sons of Hassenaah rebuilt the Fish Gate. They laid its beams and positioned its doors, its bolts, and its bars.
Nehemiah 3:6
Context3:6 Joiada son of Paseah and Meshullam son of Besodeiah worked on the Jeshanah Gate. 2 They laid its beams and positioned its doors, its bolts, and its bars.
Nehemiah 4:5
Context4:5 Do not cover their iniquity, and do not wipe out their sin from before them. For they have bitterly offended 3 the builders! 4
Nehemiah 4:12
Context4:12 So it happened that the Jews who were living near them came and warned us repeatedly 5 about all the schemes 6 they were plotting 7 against us.
Nehemiah 4:18
Context4:18 The builders to a man had their swords strapped to their sides while they were building. But the trumpeter 8 remained with me.
Nehemiah 6:13
Context6:13 He had been hired to scare me so that I would do this and thereby sin. They would thus bring reproach on me and I 9 would be discredited. 10
Nehemiah 7:7
Context7:7 They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum, and Baanah.
The number of Israelite men 11 was as follows:
Nehemiah 8:8
Context8:8 They read from the book of God’s law, explaining it 12 and imparting insight. Thus the people 13 gained understanding from what was read.
Nehemiah 8:14
Context8:14 They discovered written in the law that the LORD had commanded through 14 Moses that the Israelites should live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month,
Nehemiah 9:1
Context9:1 On the twenty-fourth day of this same month the Israelites assembled; they were fasting and wearing sackcloth, their heads covered with dust.
Nehemiah 9:12
Context9:12 You guided them with a pillar of cloud by day and with a pillar of fire by night to illumine for them the path they were to travel.
Nehemiah 9:21
Context9:21 For forty years you sustained them. Even in the desert they never lacked anything. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.
Nehemiah 11:30
Context11:30 Zanoah, Adullam and their settlements, in Lachish and its fields, and in Azekah and its villages. So they were encamped from Beer Sheba to the Valley of Hinnom.
Nehemiah 12:45
Context12:45 They performed the service of their God and the service of purification, along with the singers and gatekeepers, according to the commandment of David and 15 his son Solomon.
Nehemiah 13:2
Context13:2 for they had not met the Israelites with food 16 and water, but instead had hired Balaam to curse them. (Our God, however, turned the curse into blessing.)
1 tn Heb “servant” (so KJV, ASV; NAB “slave”; NCV “officer.” This phrase also occurs in v. 19.
2 tn Or “the Old Gate” (cf. KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV, NLT).
3 tn The Hiphil stem of כָּעַס (ka’as) may mean: (1) “to provoke to anger”; (2) “to bitterly offend”; or (3) “to grieve” (BDB 495 s.v. Hiph.; HALOT 491 s.v. כעס hif). The Hebrew lexicons suggest that “bitterly offend” is the most appropriate nuance here.
4 tn Heb “before the builders.” The preposition נֶגֶד (neged, “before”) here connotes “in the sight of” or “in the view of” (BDB 617 s.v. 1.a; HALOT 666 s.v. 1.a).
5 tn Heb “ten times.”
6 tc The MT reads the anomalous מִכָּל־הַמְּקֹמוֹת (mikkol hammÿqomot, “from every place”) but the BHS editors propose כָּל־הַמְּזִמּוֹת (kol hammÿzimmot, “about every scheme”). The initial mem (מ) found in the MT may have been added accidentally due to dittography with the final mem (ם) on the immediately preceding word, and the MT qof (ק) may have arisen due to orthographic confusion with the similar looking zayin (ז). The emendation restores sense to the line in the MT, which makes little sense and features an abrupt change of referents: “Wherever you turn, they will be upon us!” The threat was not against the villagers living nearby but against those repairing the wall, as the following context indicates. See also the following note on the word “plotting.”
7 tc The MT reads תָּשׁוּבוּ (tashuvu, “you turn”) which is awkward contextually. The BHS editors propose emending to חָשְׁבוּ (hashÿvu, “they were plotting”) which harmonizes well with the context. This emendation involves mere orthographic confusion between similar looking ח (khet) and ת (tav), and the resultant dittography of middle vav (ו) in MT. See also the preceding note on the word “schemes.”
8 tn Heb “the one blowing the shophar.”
9 tc The translation reads לִי (li, “to me”) rather than the MT reading לָהֶם (lahem, “to them”).
10 tn Heb “would have a bad name.”
11 tn Heb “the men of the people of Israel.” Some English versions translate as “the people from Israel” (NCV) or “the Israelite people” (NRSV), but “men” should be retained because the following numbers presumably include only adult males.
12 tn The exact meaning of the pual participle מְפֹרָשׁ (mÿforash) in this verse is uncertain. The basic sense of the Hebrew word seems to be “to make distinct.” The word may also have the sense of “to divide in parts,” “to interpret,” or “to translate.” The context of Neh 8:8 does not decisively clarify how the participle is to be understood here. It probably refers to the role of the Levites as those who explained or interpreted the portions of biblical text that had been publicly read on this occasion. A different option, however, is suggested by the translation distincte (“distinctly”) of the Vulgate (cf. KJV, ASV). If the Hebrew word means “distinctly” here, it would imply that the readers paid particular attention to such things as word-grouping and pronunciation so as to be sure that the listeners had every opportunity to understand the message that was being read. Yet another view is found in the Talmud, which understands translation of the Hebrew text into Aramaic to be what is in view here. The following explanation of Neh 8:8 is found in b. Megillah 3a: “‘And they read in the book, in the law of God’: this indicates the [Hebrew] text; ‘with an interpretation’: this indicates the targum; ‘and they gave the sense’: this indicates the verse stops; ‘and caused them to understand the reading’: this indicates the accentuation, or, according to another version, the Masoretic notes.” However, this ancient rabbinic view that the origins of the Targum are found in Neh 8:8 is debatable. It is not clear that the practice of paraphrasing the Hebrew biblical text into Aramaic in order to accommodate the needs of those Jews who were not at home in the Hebrew language developed this early. The translation of מְפֹרָשׁ adopted above (i.e., “explaining it”) understands the word to have in mind an explanatory function (cf. NAB, NCV, TEV, NLT) rather than one of translation.
13 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
14 tn Heb “by the hand of.”
15 tc With many medieval Hebrew
16 tn Heb “bread.” The Hebrew term is generic here, however, referring to more than bread alone.
