And indicates a succession of events from the search for the historical document to its finding. In Good News Translation, however, the narrative shifts abruptly from Babylon to Ecbatana as indicated by the conjunction “But,” followed by the affirmation that “it was in the city of Ecbatana” that the search was successful (similarly New Revised Standard Version).

Ecbatana, the capital which is in the province of Media: Cyrus stayed in Babylon in the winter, in Susa in the spring, and in Ecbatana in the summer. Ecbatana served as Cyrus’s official summer residence and was the summer capital of the Persian Empire. It was a fortified city. The word translated capital is literally “fortress” (so New Jerusalem Bible, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible; “citadel” in New International Version). It was the former capital of the Medes, which was captured by Cyrus in 550 B.C. It was located in mountainous terrain at the foot of Mount Alvend about 450 kilometers (280 miles) northeast of Babylon. This is the present-day site of Hamadan in Iran. For province see Ezra 2.1.

A scroll was found: Scroll is discussed in verse 1. It may be translated “rolled book” or “rolled leather with writing on it.” The passive construction was found will need to be transformed in some languages into an active form. What is important is not to identify who found the scroll, but the fact that the scroll was located. An indefinite third person plural pronoun may be used (“they found the scroll”) or something more explicit like “the king’s searchers found the scroll.”

On which this was written: This is a stative construction, not a passive one. The scroll had writing on it, and the message of the writing is important in the narrative. One possible rephrasing of this construction might be “There was writing on it that said,” or in some languages an active verbal construction may be used, such as “They had written these words on it.”

A record: The word record refers to a summary or memorandum of an official decree or decision. This may have been the first word of the document as it is presented in Revised Standard Version and in other versions (so New International Version, New Revised Standard Version, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible). Good News Translation restructures to incorporate the translation of this word into the main part of the verse (also Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch), while Contemporary English Version makes it a sentence that continues into the following verse: “This official record will show….”

Similarly to Ezra 1.2, the decree must be set off by appropriate punctuation marks or formatting to indicate that the words of the decree are being quoted. Both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation use opening and closing quotation marks to show where the text of the decree begins and ends. For Revised Standard Version the opening is at the end of verse 2, but for Good News Translation it is at the beginning of verse 3. As with previous letters and documents, Good News Translation slightly indents the left margin of this decree in verses 3-5 to set it apart from the surrounding text. It also does this for the letter in verses 6-12.

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 .