Also I make a decree that if anyone alters this edict: Darius continues his decree by establishing penalties and pronouncing a curse on those who disobeyed his edict. The word translated here as edict may mean “word” or “sentence,” or it may refer to a “letter” or a “report” as in Ezra 5.7. Here most versions take it as synonymous with the word translated decree.

Anyone is literally “any person” and this may be rendered in the singular as in Revised Standard Version or in the plural as in Good News Translation. Translators should use the form that is appropriate for expressing this type of official warning or threat of punishment. Translators must maintain consistency of singular or plural throughout the entire verse.

The word alters can mean either “change” (New International Version, Darby) or “disobey” (Good News Translation, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, New Jerusalem Bible). Since it is government officials who are being addressed, they are in a position either to try to change the decree or to disobey it.

A beam shall be pulled out of his house, and he shall be impaled upon it: Part of the penalty for disobeying the edict is impalement. A beam here refers to wooden stakes that were used in the building of walls (see Ezra 5.8). He shall be impaled upon it is literally “lifted up he shall be beaten upon it.” Impaling was a Persian practice inherited from the Assyrians and was used as a punishment for serious offenses such as sedition and violation of treaty oaths. A sharpened beam was set into the ground and a person was put on the beam with the sharp point inserted under the chest and through the lungs. He was left to hang until dead.

His house shall be made a dunghill: The meaning of making a house a dunghill is not certain, but it many cultures this will be understood to mean destroying his house to make it a rubbish heap. In 2 Kgs 10.27 a house of the god Baal was made into a latrine. The Aramaic word found here is used in a later period to mean “offensive” or “repulsive.” It is used in Dan 2.5 and 3.29 with the meaning of “ruins.” The word may be from a Syriac root meaning “confiscate,” which would explain the Septuagint translation: “his house shall be done [away with] according to me.” New English Bible has “his house shall be forfeit.” It can be translated to mean made into a place of refuse or a ruin. New Jerusalem Bible says the house should be “reduced to a rubbish-heap” (similarly Good News Translation), while Revised English Bible translates that it is “to be razed to the ground.” This Handbook recommends the interpretation of Good News Translation for this expression.

Quoted with permission from Noss, Philip A. and Thomas, Kenneth J. A Handbook on Ezra. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2005. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .