[Today’s English Version E.2; Revised Standard Version 16.2]

The more … the more: to avoid this comparative construction that is often difficult to translate, the Greek text may be followed more closely; for example, “Many [people] who are often honored by the very great kindness of their benefactors become more arrogant [than before]” (similarly New Jerusalem Bible and Traduction œcuménique de la Bible).

Benefactors are people who give someone else aid of some kind, usually financial. (See also verses 3, 13.) This noun may often be rendered in a compound construction or in a descriptive phrase, “those who do good.” Though the king does not mention anyone by name here, benefactors and many men are indirect allusions to the king himself and to Haman respectively.

It will be important for the translator to use natural idioms, and it may be helpful to restructure the verse according to receptor language practice. A possible model is “Sometimes benefactors do very good things to some people, and this gives honor to those people; but when they receive very good things like this more often, their heads become bigger than before.”

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Noss, Philip A. A Handbook on the Book of Esther — Deuterocanon: The Greek Text. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .