With three courses of great stones and one course of timber: The text here specifies how many layers of great stones and timber there will be in the walls (compare 1 Kgs 6.36; Ezra 5.8). This is a design that apparently originated in Anatolia in what is present-day Turkey, possibly as a protection against earthquake damage. The Aramaic adjective for great is the same word that was translated “huge” in Ezra 5.8. Translators are advised to use the same term in both contexts as most versions do. The one course of timber follows a manuscript of the Septuagint. This is given a C rating by Hebrew Old Testament Text Project and is recommended to translators. MT has “new timber” instead of one course of timber, but new timber would have been disastrous to use.
Good News Translation interprets and restructures the first part of the verse to make explicit how the construction may have been done (compare 1 Kgs 6.36; 7.9-12): “The walls are to be built with one layer of wood on top of each three layers of stone.” Bible en français courant says “They will alternate three layers of large stones with one layer of wooden beams.”
Let the cost be paid: This is the decree of the king. He does not specify what shall be paid for or how much money shall be spent. He simply affirms that “The expense will be given” (Chouraqui), “The cost is to be met” (New Jerusalem Bible), or “the expense will be covered” (Traduction œcuménique de la Bible). Because this is part of the king’s decree, it is rendered as a third person imperative by Revised Standard Version (also New King James Version ). Good News Translation emphasizes the implied meaning of the royal decree by saying “All expenses.”
From the royal treasury is literally “from the house of the king” (so Traduction œcuménique de la Bible), but the reference is not to the king’s living quarters. The meaning here is that the empire’s financial resources that were controlled by the king were to be used to pay the entire cost of the rebuilding of the Temple. If there is no technical term for an official state treasury in the receptor language, translators may use a descriptive phrase, such as “the place of the king’s money” or “where the empire’s money was kept.”
Quoted with permission from Noss, Philip A. and Thomas, Kenneth J. A Handbook on Ezra. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2005. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .