The gates of Jerusalem will sing hymns of joy: In order to avoid the picture of city gates singing, Good News Translation expresses the first line in such a way as to have singing at the gates, with people understood as the ones doing the singing, “Joyful songs will ring out from your gates.” We may also say “The joyful songs of Jerusalem’s people will ring out from its gates.”

And all her houses will cry may be rendered “and from all your houses people will shout” (Good News Translation) or “and people will shout from all its [Jerusalem’s] houses.”

Hallelujah in Hebrew means “Praise the Lord” (Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version).

Blessed be the God of Israel may be translated “Praise the God who the people of Israel serve.”

The blessed will bless: This reflects an effective but complex play on words in Greek. Not only does the verb (bless) echo the subject (the blessed), but both words echo the use of the word in the previous line, where it refers to God. It is the same word used in verse 12 of those who revere God. Good News Translation translates “Jerusalem, God will bless your people, and they will praise….” The problem with this is that it turns a description of the current state of God’s people (blessed) into a promise for the future; this is not what the verse is saying. Contemporary English Version is closer with “God’s people will praise…,” but this gives up any attempt to preserve the connections the author has made with his repeated use of the same word. This could be improved by a bit of expansion: “the people God has blessed will praise….” This loses the internal echo blessed … bless in this verse, but it is consistent with the rest of the chapter, and identifies who the blessed are and why they are blessed.

Holy name: Here the name is clearly God’s (compare verse 11).

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.