Nehemiah 13:25 - On the noun אֲנָשִׁים

Commentary on Translation Choices in the JPS TANAKH (RJPS)

וָאָרִ֤יב עִמָּם֙ וָאֲקַֽלְלֵ֔ם וָאַכֶּ֥ה מֵהֶ֛ם אֲנָשִׁ֖ים וָֽאֶמְרְטֵ֑ם וָאַשְׁבִּיעֵ֣ם בֵּֽאלֹהִ֗ים אִם־תִּתְּנ֤וּ בְנֹֽתֵיכֶם֙ לִבְנֵיהֶ֔ם וְאִם־תִּשְׂאוּ֙ מִבְּנֹ֣תֵיהֶ֔ם לִבְנֵיכֶ֖ם וְלָכֶֽם׃

Nehemiah 13:25

I censured them, cursed them, flogged certain ones, tore out their hair, and adjured them by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters in marriage to their sons, or take any of their daughters for your sons or yourselves.

(The above rendering is the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. Before accounting for this rendering, I will analyze the plain sense of the Hebrew term containing אִישׁ, by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this introduction, pp. 11–16.)

The clause under study is וָאַכֶּה מֵהֶם אֲנָשִׁים. Being the situating noun, it is used to put attention on a situation of interest, while succinctly depicting that situation schematically.

As I have shown elsewhere, the situating noun is used in dozens of instances to introduce into the discourse an unquantified subset of a known group (see under Test #3 in Stein 2021, with Table 9B in the online documentation). Here, apparently Nehemiah refers to an attempt to make an example of a subset of troublemakers, presumably so as to discourage bad behavior more generally.

Nehemiah’s list of adopted measures seems to be in order of increasing severity. In other words, he is claiming to have administered corporal punishment in a judicious and measured manner.

As for rendering into English, the NJPS “flogged them” is unduly vague, given that the speaker has actually gone out of his way to say that only a subset of the group was punished in that manner. Better is the rendering “beat some of them” in NRSV, REB, ESV, and NLT. Yet even the vague modifier some makes the application of punishment sound arbitrary and capricious—which is misleading.

The revised rendering “flogged certain ones” is more in accord with the intentionality and specificity of applied punishment that Nehemiah is expressing.

Gender is not at issue. There are no grounds for rendering in gendered terms.