Shall we then listen to you…?: Nehemiah continues with his series of rhetorical questions. He asks whether we should listen to the people he is accusing. The we here is clearly the exclusive first person plural pronoun because Nehemiah is disassociating himself and those with him from the people who have married foreign wives. Listen implies following their example (so Good News Translation). To do so would be to do all this great evil. The word evil occurs here for the fourth time in this chapter (earlier in verses 7, 17, 18) and it is modified by the adjectival phrase all this great. Nehemiah explains what this great evil is. It is to act treacherously against our God. This is to be unfaithful to their covenant with God, or as Revised English Bible and New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh say, “breaking faith with our God” (see Ezra 9.2; 10.2). The pronoun our here is the inclusive plural because he is the God of all the people of Israel.

By this complex rhetorical question Nehemiah strongly asserts that we the people today should not follow the example of those Jews who are marrying foreign women, as Solomon did, for that is a sin against our God. Notice here that Good News Translation retains the rhetorical question. The answer to the question is certainly understood to be an emphatic “No!” Translators should express equivalent drama in their rendering of this episode.

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 .