Why do you beat us?: This will be an effective translation in many languages. It is also possible to combine this with Because your husbands are dead? and translate “Why do you beat us because your husbands have died?” or “Just because your husbands have all died is no reason for you to beat us.” Good News Translation “Why should you take it out on us?” is effective English and captures the meaning, though it leaves unspoken the important information, clear in Greek, that Sarah has beaten the maids.

Go with them!: Contemporary English Version translates “Just go where they are!” Good News Translation, however, fills in the information that the servant is suggesting that Sarah should die too: “Why don’t you go and join your dead husbands.” Another possible model is “Go ahead and die with them!”

May we never see a son or daughter of yours is translated well by Contemporary English Version: “We hope you never have any children!”

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.