[Today’s English Version A.6; Revised Standard Version 11.7]

At their roaring: Today’s English Version does not translate the final clause in 11.6 (A.5), “and they roared terribly.” Today’s English Version states that information here for the first time, but in so doing it loses the relationship between the roaring of the dragons and the preparations for war. New Jerusalem Bible translates “At the sound of them every nation made ready to wage war.” Instead of repeating the words at their roaring, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente says “at that signal, every nation prepared for war.”

Every nation: ethnos refers, of course, to non-Jews, but more specifically it refers to nations as political entities, as in Joel 3.2 and Zech 14.2. These are the nations making up the Persian Empire.

The nation of the righteous or “the righteous nation” (New Revised Standard Version) refers to the Jewish people. Here ethnos is applied to them as well (see Septuagint 1.3 and Addition F.6). Today’s English Version makes explicit that the righteous refers to people, and that this people belongs to God. Bible en français courant describes them as a people of faithful ones, or “the faithful people.” New Jerusalem Bible says “the nation of the just.” The Greek word translated righteous means “right, lawful, just,” but in the context of the Old Testament it does not refer primarily to moral, ethical behavior according to some general moral code that all people recognize. Rather, to be righteous was to fulfil one’s duties as required by the covenant made with God. The sense here, then, is not first of all that the Jews were virtuous people, but rather that they were a nation in right relationship to God and belonging to God.

In translation righteous may be expressed idiomatically as “those who do things according to the right way before God,” “those who are straight before God,” or “those who have clean hearts [or, livers].” It should not be translated as “those who are innocent,” or vaguely as “the nation of good people.”

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Noss, Philip A. A Handbook on the Book of Esther — Deuterocanon: The Greek Text. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .