The term conveys the notion of being scorned, mocked, reviled, or disgraced. Two parties are involved in the term, the one party doing the deriding, the other party those being derided. Nehemiah does not mention who does the deriding, but we well understand that this is a reference to the surrounding nations (Ezekiel 25:3; Ezekiel 26:2; Ezekiel 36:2). The Jews themselves, the people of Israel, were on the receiving end of their derision; note the pronoun we.
There is, however, a deeper level implicit in the term derision.
For it was God himself who handed over the people of Jerusalem to disgrace at the hands of the Babylonians, and he did so because of the people’s insistence on serving the gods of the nations. We might say, God humiliated Israel on account of her sins (Deuteronomy 28:37; Isaiah 43:28; Jeremiah 24:9). That their prize city lay in ruins was embarrassing beyond measure to the people of Israel, who had boasted that they belonged to Yahweh, the God of heaven, who had made this city his dwelling place (Psalm 132:13). The promise of the Lord, though, had been that he would respond to repentance with abundant grace, even grant restoration (Leviticus 26:40–42; 1 Kings 8:46–53; Jeremiah 29:10–14). In fact, Jeremiah specifically foretold that the city would one day be rebuilt (Jeremiah 31:38–40) as God’s gracious response to the renewal of their hearts (Jeremiah 31:31–33; Zechariah 14:10–11).
17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.”