Stones:

• 3 cubits= 4½ feet= 1½ meters

• 6 cubits= 9 feet= 3 meters

Walls:

• 70 cubits= 105 feet= 35 meters

• 50 cubits= 75 feet= 25 meters

Towers:

• 100 cubits= 150 feet= 50 meters

• 60 cubits= 90 feet= 30 meters

Gates:

• 70 cubits= 105 feet= 35 meters

• 40 cubits= 60 feet= 20 meters

Built walls about Ecbatana with hewn stones means “used cut stones to build a wall around the city of Ecbatana.” In some languages translators will need to indicate that King Arphaxad didn’t do this work himself, but had workmen do it; for example, “King Arphaxad had them cut large stones and build a wall around Ecbatana.”

It is possible to reorder the clauses in verse 2 in a similar way to Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version as follows:

• King Arphaxad had them build a wall around the city of Ecbatana that was over 100 feet high and 75 feet thick. They built the wall with stones that they cut; each stone was 4 1/2 feet wide and 9 feet long.

Notice that Good News Translation uses Arabic numerals for the numbers, whereas Revised Standard Version and Contemporary English Version spell the numbers out. Translators should do what is most natural in their language.

At the gates he built towers: The text does not tell us how many gates there were or how many towers. Good News Translation indicates one tower at each gate, but the text does not say this. The author could well be thinking of two at each gate, one on either side. Towers were immense stone structures either built on the walls or, in this case, attached to the walls beside a gate. On these towers were protected places where archers could shoot down on the enemy soldiers. Many translators will need to use a descriptive phrase; for example, “high strong buildings beside each gate” (so also Tob 13.12).

Sixty cubits wide at the foundations may be rendered “with a base that was ninety feet wide” (Contemporary English Version) or “that was ninety feet [or, thirty meters] wide at the bottom.”

Gates … forty cubits wide means “gates … sixty feet [or, twenty meters] wide.” It is important that the information about the width of the gates be placed in conjunction with the following information about the army.

So that his armies could march out … and his infantry form their ranks may also be expressed as “wide enough that his soldiers could march out [of the city] in rows.” The author impresses us with the width of these city gates by telling us that the infantry, the foot soldiers, could march through in formation without breaking ranks.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Judith. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.