¹ sn The twenty-fourth day of the ninth month of Darius’ second year was Kislev 24 or December 18, 520 b.c.

¹ sn The first day of the sixth month was Elul 1 according to the Jewish calendar; August 29, 520 b.c. according to the modern (Julian) calendar.

¹ sn According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.

¹ sn According to modern reckoning, that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.

¹ tn Heb “he made [the] moon for appointed times.” The phrase “appointed times” probably refers to the months of the Hebrew lunar calendar.

² sn Cf. 3:12. Two months and ten days have passed since Haman’s edict to wipe out the Jews.

¹ sn According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.

¹ tn Heb “And the number of the days in which David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven years and six months.”

² tn Heb “Leave me alone for two months so I can go and go down on the hills and weep over my virginity—I and my friends.”

³ tn Heb “the moon.” Many English versions regard this as a reference to “months” (“moons”) rather than the moon itself (cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).

¹ sn The month Abib, later called Nisan (Neh 2:1; Esth 3:7), corresponds to March-April in the modern calendar.

¹ tn This expression is an adverbial accusative of time. The feast was to last from the 15th to the 21st of the month.

³ sn The silver coins were denarii. The denarius was worth about a day’s wage for a laborer; this would be an amount worth not quite two years’ pay. The debts were significant: They represented two months’ pay and one and three quarter years’ pay (20 months) based on a six day work week.

² sn The eighth month of Darius’ second year was late October—late November, 520 b.c., by the modern (Julian) calendar. This is two months later than the date of Haggai’s first message to the same community (cf. Hag 1:1).

¹ sn New moon festivals were a monthly ritual in Israel (see R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 469-70). In this context the New Moon festival of the seventh month, when the Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated (note the reference to a “festival” in the next line), may be in view.

¹ tn The MT has simply “of the month,” but the parallel passage in Jer 52:6 has “fourth month,” and this is followed by almost all English translations. The word “fourth,” however, is not actually present in the MT of 2 Kgs 25:3.

² sn Abib appears to be an old name for the month, meaning something like “[month of] fresh young ears” (Lev 2:14 [Heb]) (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 106). B. Jacob (Exodus, 364) explains that these names were not precise designations, but general seasons based on the lunar year in the agricultural setting.

² sn Judging from v. 22, this was one of the winter months, meaning that the reckoning is based on the calendar that starts with April rather than the one that starts with September (Nisan to Nisan rather than Tishri to Tishri). The ninth month would have been Kislev, which corresponds roughly to December. According to Babylonian historical records, this is the same year and the same month when Ashkelon was captured and sacked. The surrender of Jerusalem and the subsequent looting of the temple in the previous year (Dan 1:1), and the return of the menacing presence of Nebuchadnezzar in the near vicinity, were probably the impetus for the fast.

³ tn The Greek term καί (kai) has not been translated here and before the following term “month” since English normally uses a coordinating conjunction only between the last two elements in a series of three or more.

² tn Grk “who was brought up for three months.” The continuation of the sentence as a relative clause is awkward in English, so a new sentence was started in the translation by changing the relative pronoun to a regular pronoun (“he”).