Nehemiah 8:7 Commentary and Bible Study

Then we read here of the others, the helpers, in the worship in the leading on the platform, and what they did. These Levites ‘caused the people to understand the law: and the people stood in their place.’ They ‘understand the law’: that means they either explained it, or it may mean in this instance that they translated it, because a lot of these people had come back from seventy years of captivity in Babylon, and they didn't speak Hebrew anymore. They didn't speak the language of worship in Jerusalem, so maybe they were also functioning as interpreters and explaining things at the same time.