Genesis 31:47

31:47 Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, ¹  but Jacob called it Galeed. ² 

Ezra 4:7

4:7 And during the reign ³  of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, ⁴  Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of their colleagues ⁵  wrote to King Artaxerxes ⁶  of Persia. This letter ⁷  was first written in Aramaic but then translated.

[Aramaic:] ⁸ 

Isaiah 36:11

36:11 Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the chief adviser, “Speak to your servants in Aramaic, ⁹  for we understand it. Don’t speak with us in the Judahite dialect ¹⁰  in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”

[31:47]  ¹ sn Jegar Sahadutha. Laban the Aramean gave the place an Aramaic name which means “witness pile” or “the pile is a witness.”

[31:47]  ² sn Galeed also means “witness pile” or “the pile is a witness,” but this name is Canaanite or Western Semitic and closer to later Hebrew. Jacob, though certainly capable of speaking Aramaic, here prefers to use the western dialect.

[4:7]  ³ tn Heb “And in the days.”

[4:7]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ tc The translation reads the plural with the Qere rather than the singular found in the MT Kethib.

[4:7]  ⁶ sn Artaxerxes I ruled in Persia from ca. 465–425 b.c.

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

[4:7]  ⁸ 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]  ⁹ sn Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the Assyrian empire.

[36:11]  ¹⁰ tn Or “in Hebrew” (NIV, NCV, NLT); NAB, NASB “in Judean.”