Good News Translation has restructured this verse by arranging the references to time in a manner more natural in English style. La Bible du Semeur provides another way of restructuring: “It was the tenth month, that is, the month of Tebeth, of the seventh year of his reign, that they took Esther to the emperor in the imperial palace.”
The text does not say who took Esther to King Xerxes, only that she was taken. Perhaps the king’s eunuchs were the ones who took her to the king. In some languages a specific verbal construction of either a verb or a verb plus preposition may be used to indicate that Esther was being taken to the king as his wife. It may also be necessary to restate the clause in the active voice; for example, “And when they took Esther to King Ahasuerus.”
The tenth month was approximately from mid-December to mid-January of our modern calendar. (See the detailed comment and diagram of the Hebrew calendar, page 97 and following.) Tebeth, found only here in the Old Testament, began with the new moon that would appear about mid-December to mid-January of our modern calendar. This is the first event in the book that the author locates according to month. He cites the month first by number in the Hebrew fashion, and then by its Babylonian name that the Jews used from the time of the captivity. Almost all versions retain both the ordinal and the name used by the author. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, however, omits the name of the month: “in the tenth month of his seventh year of reigning.” The Living Bible also omits the Babylonian name but substitutes the modern English name: “in January of the seventh year of his reign.” The use of two calendars in identifying months is evidence of the importance the author gives to time and to history in telling the story of Esther. The two calendar systems should be maintained in translation. The Babylonian name may be transliterated like other proper nouns. A footnote may then be used to explain Tebeth, or a glossary entry may discuss the Old Testament calendar system.
Seventh year: about 478 B.C.
Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Noss, Philip A. A Handbook on Esther (The Hebrew Text). (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .