When I heard these words: The Hebrew construction with the connective conjunction and the verb “to be” opens this temporal clause (see verse 1 above). King James Version repeats the pattern, “And it came to pass…,” although New King James Version modifies it to a more contemporary English style with “So it was….”
Nehemiah continues his own account of events in first person discourse. “Hearing these things,” he reacted with shock to the information that he received about Jerusalem. His actions were the same as those of Ezra when he heard about intermarriage with non-Jews (Ezra 9.3-5): he sat down, wept, mourned, and continued fasting and praying. This list of Nehemiah’s actions does not indicate a clear order of events. His first act was to sit down and to weep. Then his sorrow took the form of mourning during an unspecified number of days. At the same time that he was mourning, he fasted and prayed. These were the characteristic actions of a devout person in a time of crisis.
Nehemiah sat down on the ground. This was a sign in the form of a physical gesture that indicated his sorrow and distress.
The Hebrew verb for wept is used for crying with tears or for wailing and lamenting. Here it is the second sign of Nehemiah’s sorrow. It accompanied his motion of sitting down.
Mourned for days: Mourning was a formal expression of grief over a situation or an event. It is not limited to grief on the occasion of someone’s death. Here Nehemiah was mourning over the sad state of Jerusalem. The verb is followed by the word days, which indicates that Nehemiah’s sign of sorrow was not merely a brief period of lamenting. Good News Translation inserts an adjective with “several days,” while New Jerusalem Bible says “some days.”
Mourning was often accompanied by other formal signs of sorrow. Here the mourning is carried out with two religious gestures, namely, fasting and praying. Fasting is a deliberate act of not eating (see Ezra 8.21). It is denying oneself food for a period of time for a specific reason. Here it was a visible sign of Nehemiah’s distress.
The act of praying may be performed for many different reasons. It may be to give thanks to God, to ask for forgiveness of sins, or to request divine action or intervention, among other reasons. The context here makes it clear that Nehemiah’s action was calling upon God in his time of distress. The translator should therefore use a verb or an expression that refers to a general call to God or to a prayerful attitude over a period of time but one that is not thanksgiving or a specific request.
Before the God of heaven: The Hebrew expression translated before means simply that Nehemiah prayed “to” God (so Good News Translation). Nehemiah’s use of the common Gentile title God of heaven indicates that this title had also become accepted by the Jews (see Ezra 1.2).
Since this verse begins with the same Hebrew discourse marker as verse 1, a number of versions indicate a division in the discourse structure here by beginning a new paragraph as Revised Standard Version has done (so New Revised Standard Version, New International Version). Some versions restructure the verse into two sentences marking a break between the immediate acts of Nehemiah on hearing the bad news and his subsequent actions that extended over some days. Good News Translation and Bible en français courant do this and they are good models to follow. The translator will need to use grammatical structures that indicate the consecutive nature of certain actions, the continuing nature of others, and the simultaneous nature of others as appropriate in each case.
Quoted with permission from Noss, Philip A. and Thomas, Kenneth J. A Handbook on Nehemiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2005. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .