Join with their brethren, their nobles: Their brethren (New Revised Standard Version “their kin”), which is in apposition to their nobles (see Neh 3.5), refers to the leaders of the Jews in verses 1-27 who are related to them by their common religion and ethnic heritage. They join with them in the sense of “holding fast” (literal Hebrew) to them in the agreement that they are making. This can be rendered as “we give ourselves to stand as one with our leaders,” “we enter into the agreement with…” or another equivalent expression.
Enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s law: To enter into a curse and an oath is to take on themselves an obligation by an oral pledge. Taking an oath is to make a promise in the name of someone or something greater than oneself. The text does not indicate here by whose name or by what object the people swore this oath. The curse is an imprecation upon themselves that if the oath they have taken is broken, then the curse will come into effect. The penalty of the curse is not identified here, but the sufferings mentioned in the prayer of confession in the previous chapter would have been in the minds of the people. Good News Translation reverses the order for the oath to precede the curse, and many translators may wish to follow this example. Translators must find words that refer to customs in the receptor culture that are similar enough to these ideas or that are general enough to be acceptable here. If possible, the object of the oath and the penalty for breaking it should not be made explicit. One possible rendering is “they swore an oath that they would follow God’s Law and they made a curse that would fall upon themselves if they broke their oath.”
The promise made in their oath is to walk in God’s law. To walk in is a Hebrew expression meaning “to follow” (so New International Version), “to obey” (see Neh 5.9), or “to live according to” (so Good News Translation). God’s law (torah in Hebrew) refers to the commandments in the Torah, that is, the books of Moses.
For Moses the servant of God, see Neh 1.7.
Observe and do: These two verbs are near synonyms in Hebrew. The first expresses the idea of “keeping” or “watching” while the second has a more general sense of “carrying out” or “obeying.” Nouvelle version Segond révisée and Traduction œcuménique de la Bible retain two verbs, “observe and put in practice,” while New English Bible translates “observe and fulfil.” New International Version combines them by saying “obey carefully.” This is more satisfactory than Good News Translation, which only has “obey.”
The commandments of the LORD our Lord: The law has been identified as belonging to God, but the commandments are also identified with the personal name of God, which is YHWH in Hebrew and rendered as LORD in Revised Standard Version. The title of Lord is also used here (ʾadonai in Hebrew). For a discussion of the names of God, see “Translating Ezra and Nehemiah,” pages 18-19.
For commandments, ordinances and statutes, see Neh 1.7; 9.13-14.
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 .