The thing you are doing is not good: Nehemiah rebuked those who had been taking the properties and children of others. He based his rebuke on the moral grounds that what they were doing was not good.

Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God…?: The Hebrew text follows the first statement with a rhetorical question intended to indicate how the Jewish leaders should act. Good News Translation states it emphatically, making it an affirmative declaration. They should walk in the fear of our God. This may mean that they should keep God’s commandments or that they should be concerned about how God would want them to act. To walk is Hebrew figurative language for expressing personal behavior (see Psa 1.1).

To prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies: Taunts is literally “sneers” or “ridicule.” Nehemiah did not want the Jews to be humiliated by failing to obey the covenant with God. He did not want them to be shamed before their opponents (see Ezra 9.7; Neh 1.3; 2.17).

The nations who are described as our enemies were those people who were foreign. They did not worship the God of Israel. Good News Translation makes it explicit that these were “the Gentiles.” See the comments at Ezra 6.21, where Revised Standard Version renders the Hebrew word for nations as “peoples.”

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 .