Daniel 5:10

5:10 Due to the noise ¹  caused by the king and his nobles, the queen mother ²  then entered the banquet room. She ³  said, “O king, live forever! Don’t be alarmed! Don’t be shaken!

Daniel 8:2

8:2 In this ⁴  vision I saw myself in Susa ⁵  the citadel, ⁶  which is located in the province of Elam. In the vision I saw myself at the Ulai Canal. ⁷ 

Daniel 11:41

11:41 Then he will enter the beautiful land. ⁸  Many ⁹  will fall, but these will escape: ¹⁰  Edom, Moab, and the Ammonite leadership.

[5:10]  ¹ tn Aram “words of the king.”

[5:10]  ² tn Aram “the queen” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV). In the following discourse this woman is able to recall things about Daniel that go back to the days of Nebuchadnezzar, things that Belshazzar does not seem to recollect. It is likely that she was the wife not of Belshazzar but of Nabonidus or perhaps even Nebuchadnezzar. In that case, “queen” here means “queen mother” (cf. NCV “the king’s mother”).

[5:10]  ³ tn Aram “The queen.” The translation has used the pronoun “she” instead because repetition of the noun here would be redundant in terms of English style.

[8:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “the.”

[8:2]  ⁵ sn Susa (Heb. שׁוּשַׁן, shushan), located some 230 miles (380 km) east of Babylon, was a winter residence for Persian kings during the Achaemenid period. The language of v. 2 seems to suggest that Daniel may not have been physically present at Susa, but only saw himself there in the vision. However, the Hebrew is difficult, and some have concluded that the first four words of v. 2 in the MT are a later addition (cf. Theodotion).

[8:2]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew word בִּירָה (birah, “castle, palace”) usually refers to a fortified structure within a city, but here it is in apposition to the city name Susa and therefore has a broader reference to the entire city (against this view, however, see BDB 108 s.v. 2). Cf. NAB “the fortress of Susa”; TEV “the walled city of Susa.”

[8:2]  ⁷ tn The term אוּבַל (’uval = “stream, river”) is a relatively rare word in biblical Hebrew, found only here and in vv. 3 and 6. The Ulai was apparently a sizable artificial canal in Susa (cf. NASB, NIV, NCV), and not a river in the ordinary sense of that word.

[11:41]  ⁸ sn The beautiful land is a cryptic reference to the land of Israel.

[11:41]  ⁹ tn This can be understood as “many people” (cf. NRSV) or “many countries” (cf. NASB, NIV, NLT).

[11:41]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “be delivered from his hand.”