Then the king of Egypt gathered great forces, like the sand by the seashore, and many ships: The connector Then is not necessary. This event didn’t happen immediately after Jonathan’s victory in the previous chapter. A better connector is “Meanwhile.” The Greek text does not name Ptolemy at this point, but since he has already been introduced in 1Macc 10.51 (see the comments there), and is named in verse 3 below, there is no reason not to use his name at this point. He has been absent from the narrative a good while, so it would be helpful to add his name here. Good News Bible does this by expressing the king of Egypt as “King Ptolemy the Sixth of Egypt.” The comparison with sand is familiar in the Old Testament (see, for example, Gen 22.17; Josh 11.4). Instead of sand, Good News Bible has “grains of sand,” which is more natural in English. In languages where sand is not used for counting, we may render like the sand by the seashore as “more than anyone can count.”

And he tried to get possession of Alexander’s kingdom by trickery and add it to his own kingdom: Trickery is a better choice of words than “trap” in Good News Bible. Good News Bible uses this sentence to lead into the next verse, and this works. However, reversing the two sentences in this verse is also possible. A model that does this is:

• Meanwhile, King Ptolemy the Sixth of Egypt intended to trick Alexander in order to gain possession of Alexander’s kingdom [or, all Alexander’s lands], and add it [or, them] to his own. So Ptolemy gathered more troops than there are grains of sand on the seashore, as well as many [or, a large fleet of] ships.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.