Ezra 4:10

4:10 and the rest of nations whom the great and noble Ashurbanipal ¹  deported and settled in the cities ²  of Samaria and other places in Trans-Euphrates. ³ 

Ezra 4:17

4:17 The king sent the following response:

“To Rehum the commander, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their colleagues who live in Samaria and other parts of Trans-Euphrates: Greetings! ⁴ 

Ezra 4:9

4:9 From ⁵  Rehum the commander, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their colleagues – the judges, the rulers, the officials, the secretaries, the Erechites, the Babylonians, the people of Susa (that is, ⁶  the Elamites),

Ezra 6:16

6:16 The people ⁷  of Israel – the priests, the Levites, and the rest of the exiles ⁸  – observed the dedication of this temple of God with joy.

Ezra 7:20

7:20 The rest of the needs for the temple of your God that you may have to supply, ⁹  you may do so from the royal treasury.

Ezra 4:3

4:3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the leaders of Israel said to them, “You have no right ¹⁰  to help us build the temple of our God. We will build it by ourselves for the Lord God of Israel, just as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us.”

Ezra 4:7

4:7 And during the reign ¹¹  of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, ¹²  Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of their colleagues ¹³  wrote to King Artaxerxes ¹⁴  of Persia. This letter ¹⁵  was first written in Aramaic but then translated.

[Aramaic:] ¹⁶ 

Ezra 3:8

3:8 In the second year after they had come to the temple of God in Jerusalem, ¹⁷  in the second month, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak initiated the work, ¹⁸  along with the rest of their associates, ¹⁹  the priests and the Levites, and all those who were coming to Jerusalem from the exile. They appointed ²⁰  the Levites who were at least twenty years old ²¹  to take charge of the work on the Lord’s temple.

¹ tn Aram “Osnappar” (so ASV, NASB, NRSV), another name for Ashurbanipal.

² tc The translation reads with the ancient versions the plural בְּקֻרְיַהּ (bÿquryah, “in the cities”) rather than the singular (“in the city”) of the MT.

³ tn Aram “beyond the river.” In Ezra this term is a technical designation for the region west of the Euphrates river.

⁴ tn Aram “peace.”

⁷ tn Aram “then.” What follows in v. 9 seems to be the preface of the letter, serving to identify the senders of the letter. The word “from” is not in the Aramaic text but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

⁸ tn For the qere of the MT (דֶּהָיֵא, dehaye’, a proper name) it seems better to retain the Kethib דִּהוּא (dihu’, “that is”). See F. Rosenthal, Grammar, 25, §35; E. Vogt, Lexicon linguae aramaicae, 36.

¹⁰ tn Aram “sons of.”

¹¹ tn Aram “sons of the exile.”

¹³ tn Aram “may fall to you to give.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “not to you and to us.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “And in the days.”

²⁰ tn The LXX understands this word as a prepositional phrase (“in peace”) rather than as a proper name (“Bishlam”). Taken this way it would suggest that Mithredath was “in agreement with” the contents of Tabeel’s letter. Some scholars regard the word in the MT to be a corruption of either “in Jerusalem” (i.e., “in the matter of Jerusalem”) or “in the name of Jerusalem.” The translation adopted above follows the traditional understanding of the word as a name.

²¹ tc The translation reads the plural with the Qere rather than the singular found in the MT Kethib.

²² sn Artaxerxes I ruled in Persia from ca. 465–425 b.c.

²³ tc It is preferable to delete the MT’s וּכְתָב (ukhÿtav) here.

²⁴ sn The double reference in v. 7 to the Aramaic language is difficult. It would not make sense to say that the letter was written in Aramaic and then translated into Aramaic. Some interpreters understand the verse to mean that the letter was written in the Aramaic script and in the Aramaic language, but this does not seem to give sufficient attention to the participle “translated” at the end of the verse. The second reference to Aramaic in the verse is more probably a gloss that calls attention to the fact that the following verses retain the Aramaic language of the letter in its original linguistic form. A similar reference to Aramaic occurs in Dan 2:4b, where the language of that book shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic. Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12-26 are written in Aramaic, whereas the rest of the book is written in Hebrew.

²² map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

²³ tn Heb “began”; the phrase “the work” is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

²⁴ tn Heb “their brothers.”

²⁵ tn Heb “stood.”

²⁶ tn Heb “from twenty years and upward.”