4:7 And during the reign17 of Artaxerxes, Bishlam,18 Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of their colleagues19 wrote to King Artaxerxes20 of Persia. This letter21 was first written in Aramaic but then translated.
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.
19
tc The translation reads the plural with the Qere rather than the singular found in the MTKethib.
20
sn Artaxerxes I ruled in Persia from ca. 465–425 b.c.
21
tc It is preferable to delete the MT’s וּכְתָב (ukhétav) here.
22
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.