The investigation was completed by the first day of the first month, nearly three months later, from December 29 to March 27 of the next year. The action to be taken had been decided by the assembly that those with foreign wives were to have their wives sent away. The committee only had to determine which were actual cases of intermarriage.

They had come to an end with all the men who had married foreign women: The Hebrew text says only that “they finished with all the men…,” but it does not specify what was finished. It may be assumed within the context of the preceding verse that it was their investigations that were completed. Various translations render the sense in different ways: “they finished dealing with all the men…” (New International Version); “they had dealt with all the men…” (New Jerusalem Bible); “they had finished their inquiry into all the marriages with foreign women” (New English Bible). Revised English Bible sums it up by saying “the enquiry into all the marriages with foreign women was brought to a conclusion.” The tense of the English verb here is determined by the temporal construction that is used. If the construction “by a certain time” is used as Revised Standard Version has done, then the verb must be in the pluperfect tense to indicate that the action was completed before the time that is specified (also New English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, New Revised Standard Version). If a period of time is indicated during which the action occurs as in Good News Translation, then the verb must indicate that the action took place during that time. Contemporary English Version offers a model for restructuring the whole verse: “and they did not finish until the first day of the first month of the next year.”

The time of the verb married must be clearly indicated. The men who were identified during this investigation were those who had earlier married foreign women and therefore who were now living in the state of intermarriage with their foreign wives. For foreign women, see verses 2 and 10 above.

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 .