4:8 Rehum the commander 1 and Shimshai the scribe 2 wrote a letter concerning 3 Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows:
7:12 4 “Artaxerxes, king of kings, to Ezra the priest, a scribe of the perfect law of the God of heaven:
1 tn Aram “lord of the command.” So also in vv. 9, 17.
2 sn Like Rehum, Shimshai was apparently a fairly high-ranking official charged with overseeing Persian interests in this part of the empire. His title was “scribe” or “secretary,” but in a more elevated political sense than that word sometimes has elsewhere. American governmental titles such as “Secretary of State” perhaps provide an analogy in that the word “secretary” can have a broad range of meaning.
3 tn Or perhaps “against.”
4 sn Ezra 7:12-26 is written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew.