² tn Heb “mother,” but Hebrew often uses the terms “father” and “mother” for grandparents and more remote ancestors.

¹ tn Heb “his mother.” The pronoun (“she”) has been substituted for the noun (“mother”) in the translation because of English style.

³ tn Heb “for there was not to her father or mother.” This is universally understood to mean Esther’s father and mother were no longer alive.

³ tn Heb “makes light of his father and his mother.” Almost all English versions render this as some variation of “curses his father or mother.”

⁴ tn The “them” in the Hebrew text is feminine, referring to the mothers.

³ tn Heb “from the inner parts of my mother he mentioned my name.”

¹ tn Heb “one sucking,” i.e., still being nursed by his mother.

² tn Heb “against the son of your mother you give a fault.”

³ tn Heb “like mourning for a mother [in] sorrow I bowed down.”

² tn Heb “from the womb of my mother you [have been] my God.”

² sn Your wings. The metaphor compares God to a protective mother bird.

³ tn The parallel text in 1 Kgs 15:2 identifies his mother as “Maacah, the daughter of Abishalom” (=Absalom, 2 Chr 11:20). Although most English versions identify the mother’s father as Uriel of Gibeah, a number of English versions substitute the name “Maacah” here for the mother (e.g., NIV, NCV, CEV, NLT).

² tn Heb “he set up a throne for the mother of the king.”

¹ tc The Hebrew includes “and his father and his mother.” See the next note.

³ tn Heb “to all the extended family of the house of the father of his mother.”

¹ tn Heb “and the mother sitting upon the chicks or the eggs.”

¹ tn Heb “the daughter of your father or the daughter of your mother.”

¹ tn Heb “Laban, the brother of his mother” (twice in this verse).

⁴ tn Heb “after his mother.” This must refer to Sarah’s death.

² tn Heb “And his mother took for him a wife from the land of Egypt.”