Happy are your wives: The Hebrew term translated Happy may be interpreted as “blessed,” “fortunate” (Good News Translation, New Jerusalem Bible), or even “lucky” (New Century Version, Contemporary English Version).
The Masoretic Text in this verse says “Happy are your men” (followed by New American Bible, New International Version, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Nouvelle Bible Segond, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh). The Septuagint and the ancient Syriac say “Happy are your wives,” and this is the basis for the translations in both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation (also Revised English Bible, Parole de Vie, Osty-Trinquet, La Bible Pléiade). The Hebrew words for wives (nashim) and “men” (ʾanashim) are very similar. Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament gives a {C} rating to the variant reading your wives and suggests that scribes changed the Hebrew words for your wives to “your men” in order to omit the mention of Solomon’s wives, who had led him to worship other gods.
If the Masoretic Text is followed, translators may choose to identify “your men” (New International Version, New American Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh) as “your officials.” In this case “your men” and your servants may be parallel in meaning. Traduction œcuménique de la Bible takes the first phrase to refer to “your people” in general.
Who continually stand before you: The Hebrew expression “to stand before someone” means “to be ready to serve someone.” The same expression occurs with this meaning in 1 Kgs 12.6, 8; 17.1; 22.21.
Hear your wisdom: The verse ends in Hebrew with the abstract noun wisdom. Good News Translation restates this to say “hear your wise sayings,” but “wise sayings” probably narrows the focus too much. It will be better to use a more general term such as wisdom if possible in the receptor language.
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 .