Nehemiah and his associates called this “nephthar,” which means purification: For Nehemiah and his associates (literally “those around Nehemiah”), see the comments on verse 33. In this context “Nehemiah and his friends” (Good News Bible) or “Nehemiah and his followers (Contemporary English Version)” is acceptable, since Nehemiah would have used the same expression as his followers. The demonstrative pronoun this refers to the mysterious liquid in the story. It will be helpful to make this clear in translation, as Good News Bible does with “the liquid” and Contemporary English Version with “the oil.” Nephthar transliterates a Hebrew word. The author is probably thinking of the Hebrew verb patar, which means “release.” Purification in this context refers to making the altar pure, that is, making it useable for Jewish religious purposes. Translators may handle nephthar either of two ways: (1) They may transliterate it, as in Revised Standard Version and Good News Bible. In Good News Bible this word appears in italics (nephthar), because it is customary in English to put non-English words in italics. (2) They may avoid this word by translating the first half of the verse as follows: “Nehemiah and his friends called this liquid by a word that means ‘purification’” or even “… called this liquid a ‘purifier.’”

But by most people it is called naphtha: The Greek word naphtha today refers to a refined petroleum product, but in ancient times it simply referred to crude petroleum, thick oil as it comes out of the earth, before it is refined into gasoline and other products. There are places where it seeps out of the earth, and people in ancient times knew of it, and knew that it would burn. The play on words here (nephthar – naphtha) will almost certainly be impossible to reproduce in translation, so there is no need to use the technical term naphtha. Translators may say simply “petroleum.” If there is no word for crude petroleum, they may use “oil,” but it may need to be qualified, for example, “thick black oil that comes from the ground.”

We suggest the following model for this verse:

• Nehemiah and his friends [or, the priests] called the liquid “the purifier,” but most people call it petroleum.

Here, at the end of this account, we find the clues concerning what happened in verse 19. The priests, knowing that they would be taken into exile, wanted to hide the fire from the altar, which was supposed to keep burning. But how does one hide fire? They hid it in a dry cistern. We are probably supposed to think that they knew petroleum seeped from the ground there, and that they could light it, and it would keep burning. They would tell their sons where it was, so that when they returned to Judah, they could find it and transport it back to the altar. This is what they did in verse 20, but there was no fire—only the petroleum. They took it and soaked the wood and the sacrificial animals with it. The fire was miraculously lit when the sun came out (verse 22). When the Persian emperor, a fire worshiper, learned of it, he made the source of the petroleum a holy place. But as verse 32 shows, the Jews had no further need of it. The fire had been replaced on the altar and continued to burn.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.