Then all my property was confiscated: In languages that do not have the passive voice, this may be expressed as “Then the king [or, emperor] ordered his servants to seize all my possessions [or, everything I owned].”

Nothing was left to me … except my wife Anna and my son Tobias: The sense of this is that his wife Anna and his son Tobias were left alone; presumably they could have become slaves. Contemporary English Version has “all I had left were my wife Anna and my son Tobias.” Tobit now has nothing to call his own except his wife Anna and his son Tobias. But note that they are not with Tobit in his exile (see 2.1). Royal treasury refers to the place where the king stored all his treasure (money and other expensive objects). So we may translate “the place where the king kept all his treasures.”

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Tobit. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.