Ezra 4:7

4:7 And during the reign ¹  of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, ²  Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of their colleagues ³  wrote to King Artaxerxes ⁴  of Persia. This letter ⁵  was first written in Aramaic but then translated.

[Aramaic:] ⁶ 

Isaiah 36:11-12

36:11 Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the chief adviser, “Speak to your servants in Aramaic, ⁷  for we understand it. Don’t speak with us in the Judahite dialect ⁸  in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” 36:12 But the chief adviser said, “My master did not send me to speak these words only to your master and to you. ⁹  His message is also for the men who sit on the wall, for they will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you!” ¹⁰ 

Daniel 2:4

2:4 The wise men replied to the king: [What follows is in Aramaic ¹¹ ] “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will disclose its ¹²  interpretation.”

[4:7]  ¹ tn Heb “And in the days.”

[4:7]  ² 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.

[4:7]  ³ tc The translation reads the plural with the Qere rather than the singular found in the MT Kethib.

[4:7]  ⁴ sn Artaxerxes I ruled in Persia from ca. 465–425 b.c.

[4:7]  ⁵ tc It is preferable to delete the MT’s וּכְתָב (ukhÿtav) here.

[4:7]  ⁶ 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.

[36:11]  ⁷ sn Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the Assyrian empire.

[36:11]  ⁸ tn Or “in Hebrew” (NIV, NCV, NLT); NAB, NASB “in Judean.”

[36:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “To your master and to you did my master send me to speak these words?” The rhetorical question expects a negative answer.

[36:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “[Is it] not [also] to the men…?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Yes, it is.”

[2:4]  ¹¹ sn Contrary to common belief, the point here is not that the wise men (Chaldeans) replied to the king in the Aramaic language, or that this language was uniquely the language of the Chaldeans. It was this view that led in the past to Aramaic being referred to as “Chaldee.” Aramaic was used as a lingua franca during this period; its origins and usage were not restricted to the Babylonians. Rather, this phrase is better understood as an editorial note (cf. NAB) marking the fact that from 2:4b through 7:28 the language of the book shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic. In 8:1, and for the remainder of the book, the language returns to Hebrew. Various views have been advanced to account for this change of language, most of which are unconvincing. Most likely the change in language is a reflection of stages in the transmission history of the book of Daniel.

[2:4]  ¹² tn Or “the.”