Remember them, O my God: Nehemiah this time in another brief prayer asks God to Remember the wrongdoers as in Neh 6.14, rather than himself (see also Neh 4.4). Nehemiah has taken Jehoiada’s son as an example and has punished him, but in his prayer he calls upon God to punish all those guilty of violating the priesthood through marriage with foreigners. This is a call for God’s vengeance and punishment upon them because of the evil things they have done. In translation it will be necessary in some languages to say something like “O my God, remember those people and punish them” (compare Contemporary English Version, which has “I pray that God will punish them”).
They have defiled the priesthood: They have brought defilement or pollution upon the priesthood (see Ezra 2.62) by marrying foreigners, that is, by marrying into Sanballat’s family. They have made the state of being a priest unclean before God. This can be translated “they have put [ritual] filth upon being a priest.”
The defilement extends to the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Following another manuscript tradition, some translations say “covenant of the priests and the Levites” (Revised English Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, Osty-Trinquet). To defile a covenant means not only to break it, but also to bring dishonor upon it (so Bible en français courant). For comments on covenant, see Ezra 10.3. The covenant here could refer to the oath made by the Jews in Neh 10.28-30 to separate themselves from the peoples of the land and not intermarry with them. But this prohibition was not limited to the priests and Levites. In Num 25.12-13 there is a covenant of peace and perpetual priesthood given to the descendants of Phinehas because of his zealousness in opposition to intermarriage with foreigners. Mal 2.4-9 may be a commentary on this covenant as it refers to a covenant of life and peace with Levi that included reverence for God, righteousness in life and speech, and the responsibility to teach knowledge to the people. In the context of the Malachi passage, there is also a condemnation of marriage with “the daughter of a foreign god” (Mal 2.11).
Good News Translation is a good model for the translator to follow in translating this verse (see also New Jerusalem Bible and Revised English Bible). In many languages it will also be helpful to treat this verse as a separate paragraph as Good News Translation does.
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 .