So she stopped weeping: Notice that this short sentence properly belongs with what comes before it rather than with chapter 6. In spite of this Handbook’s policy of following the New Revised Standard Version verse numbers, we have to recognize that at this point it makes no sense. We recommend here an exception, and suggest that translators follow the numbering in Rahlfs’s Greek text and Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, calling this short sentence verse 23 of chapter 5. Verse 1 of chapter 6 will then begin: “The young man….”

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.

Here and throughout this section the young man refers to Tobias, not Raphael, as earlier. This is not the same Greek word that Tobias used to refer to Raphael (5.10), better translated as “friend”; it is the word Tobit has been using in referring to Tobias (see “child” in 2.2 and “son” in 4.20). In this present verse both Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version have simply “Tobias.”

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.