Now when the beasts had been brought virtually to a state of madness, so to speak, by the very fragrant draughts of wine mixed with frankincense and had been equipped with frightful devices, the elephant keeper: The Greek sentence here begins with the elephant keeper, which is the subject of the verb “entered” in the next verse. Most languages need to break this long sentence. We suggest rendering this verse in the active voice, and following the Greek order, beginning with “The elephant keeper…” (see the model below). For wine mixed with frankincense, see the comments on 3 Macc 5.2. Verse 2 says the wine was “unmixed,” but here it is mixed with frankincense. The point there is that the wine was not diluted—mixed with water. Whether true or not, the people believed feeding this to the elephants would bring them virtually to a state of madness, that is, where they would become wild and uncontrollable. As we noted at verse 2, it would be very difficult to feed pure frankincense to the elephants, something that Contemporary English Version‘s model wrongly indicates. We can only suppose that the frightful devices are weapons such as swords or knives that were somehow placed on the elephants’ legs so that even more harm could be done to the Jews, as they were being trampled to death. In the following model of this verse we reverse the two parts of the sentence since it seems clear that no one could have attached anything to the elephants’ legs if they were already half mad:

• The elephant keeper fastened swords and knives to the legs of the elephants, and gave them so much of the fragrant wine mixed with frankincense that they were frantic.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 3-4 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2018. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.