Besides that which came from the traders is literally “besides from the men of the traveling merchants.” Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament gives a {C} rating to this reading in the Masoretic Text and acknowledges that the Masoretic Text may not contain the original reading. But Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament also suggests that the different readings in the Septuagint for this verse and in the parallel text in 2 Chr 9.14 are both attempts to make sense of this difficult Hebrew text. The variety of translations for the first half of this verse reflect the difficulty in knowing what the correct text is as well as the difficulty in knowing what the text means.

Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament states that “the men” refers to the agents of the traveling merchants, that is, “the middlemen” of the merchants. It is also possible to understand the Hebrew word for “traveling merchants” to be in apposition to the word for “men.” The meaning will then be “besides that which came from the men traveling for commerce.” These men must have paid taxes as they passed through Solomon’s kingdom.

The Septuagint and the ancient Syriac read “apart from the tolls of the merchants” and this is the basis for the Good News Translation translation “in addition to the taxes paid by merchants” (similarly New Jerusalem Bible). In Hebrew the words for “men” and “taxes/tolls” are similar in spelling.

Revised English Bible follows the Septuagint in reading “tolls” and then corrects the Hebrew words “and all” (and from all in Revised Standard Version) to read “and the tribute of.” The resulting Revised English Bible translation for the whole verse reads “in addition to the tolls levied by the customs officers, the profits on foreign trade, and the tribute of the kings of Arabia and the regional governors.”

The traffic of the merchants seems to refer to the trade profits of retail traders. The distinction between traders and merchants is not clear in the Hebrew.

Kings of Arabia is literally “kings of the evening [ʿereb in Hebrew].” Most understand this to mean kings of Arabia (ʿarab in Hebrew), in agreement with the parallel text in 2 Chronicles. This interpretation is supported also by the ancient Syriac and the Latin Vulgate translations of this verse. The Hebrew noun translated Arabia is taken by some interpreters to be the word meaning “mixed race” (ʿēreb in Hebrew). Nouvelle Bible Segond, following this interpretation, reads “kings of the mixed populations.” Bible en français courant and Parole de Vie translate it similarly but less specifically as “foreign kings” and “kings of other peoples” respectively.

The governors of the land: Governors translates a Hebrew noun that refers to different types of officials. The land here probably refers to the land of Israel. These were the “governors of the Israelite districts” (Good News Translation, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente) listed in chapter 4, although the Hebrew word translated “governor” by Good News Translation in chapter 4 is different from the word used here.

Moffatt takes the last two groups together as referring to “Arabian emirs and … [their] vassal-princes” but “vassal-princes” is not a widely accepted interpretation.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Kings, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .