Discovery BoxEzra 4:2 
Context4:2 they came to Zerubbabel and the leaders 1 and said to them, “Let us help you build, 2 for like you we seek your God and we have been sacrificing to him 3 from the time 4 of King Esarhaddon 5 of Assyria, who brought us here.” 6
Ezra 4:7-10
Context4:7 And during the reign 7 of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, 8 Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of their colleagues 9 wrote to King Artaxerxes 10 of Persia. This letter 11 was first written in Aramaic but then translated.
[Aramaic:] 12
4:8 Rehum the commander 13 and Shimshai the scribe 14 wrote a letter concerning 15 Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows: 4:9 From 16 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, 17 the Elamites), 4:10 and the rest of nations whom the great and noble Ashurbanipal 18 deported and settled in the cities 19 of Samaria and other places in Trans-Euphrates. 20
Ezra 4:17
Context4:17 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! 21
1 tn Heb “the heads of the fathers.” So also in v. 3.
2 tn Heb “Let us build with you.”
3 tc The translation reads with the Qere, a Qumran
4 tn Heb “days.”
5 sn Esarhaddon was king of Assyria ca. 681-669
6 sn The Assyrian policy had been to resettle Samaria with peoples from other areas (cf. 2 Kgs 17:24-34). These immigrants acknowledged Yahweh as well as other deities in some cases. The Jews who returned from the Exile regarded them with suspicion and were not hospitable to their offer of help in rebuilding the temple.
7 tn Heb “And in the days.”
8 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.
9 tc The translation reads the plural with the Qere rather than the singular found in the MT Kethib.
10 sn Artaxerxes I ruled in Persia from ca. 465–425
11 tc It is preferable to delete the MT’s וּכְתָב (ukhÿtav) here.
12 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.
13 tn Aram “lord of the command.” So also in vv. 9, 17.
14 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.
15 tn Or perhaps “against.”
16 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.
17 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.
18 tn Aram “Osnappar” (so ASV, NASB, NRSV), another name for Ashurbanipal.
sn Ashurbanipal succeeded his father Esarhaddon as king of Assyria in 669
19 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.
20 tn Aram “beyond the river.” In Ezra this term is a technical designation for the region west of the Euphrates river.
21 tn Aram “peace.”
