2 Esdras 13:4-5
https://en.katabiblon.com/us/index.php? ... 2Esd&ch=13(4) καὶ ἐπὶ χεῖρα αὐτῶν κατέσχεν ἀπὸ Ραμωθ υἱὸς Ουρια υἱοῦ Ακως καὶ ἐπὶ χεῖρα αὐτῶν κατέσχεν Μοσολλαμ υἱὸς Βαραχιου υἱοῦ Μασεζεβηλ καὶ ἐπὶ χεῖρα αὐτῶν κατέσχεν Σαδωκ υἱὸς Βαανα.
(5) καὶ ἐπὶ χεῖρα αὐτῶν κατέσχοσαν οἱ Θεκωιν καὶ αδωρηεμ οὐκ εἰσήνεγκαν τράχηλον αὐτῶν εἰς δουλείαν αὐτῶν
The NETS translation has 'took control' and 'took charge' for κατέχω.
This is what R. Glenn Wooden says in the introduction to his translation of 2 Esdras:
Given that description, it's hard to wrap my head around how the translator got "κατέχω" from “חָזַק” (chazaq). Why not 'τειχίζω' or 'κτίζω' or 'οἰκοδομέω', for example? I'm not good with Hebrew. So, please, correct me if I'm wrong. But, at a glance, the Strong's entry doesn't encompass the sense of "κατέχω" at all. If anything, it looks more like 'fortify' in a literal sense (or 'repair' in a figurative sense).The Greek of 2 Esdras is arguably the most pedantic of the translations of biblical books found in "the Septuagint" and is possibly the best representative of an "interlinear translation." It has not fared well in scholarly assessments, being described as "a very literal and servile conformity to the Hebrew and Aramaic original, at the cost of clarity, and thus fails to attain even the pretense of Greek idiomatic expression, not to speak of distinction in diction."
[...]
General character
The translator of 2 Esdras used a Hebrew-Aramaic text that was of the Masoretic tradition (MT) of texts and translated it by a slavish adherence to the forms and order of the source text and with little in the way of creativity or translator's license. The translation is so close to the MT that there is very little change even of word order, a feature hard to reflect in the English translation.
https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/le ... ongs=h2388
I was tipped off to this when comparing the Russian Synodal Version, which has "чинить" (repair) with its Old Slavic predecessors (16th-18th centuries) that all seem to have “соз(и)дать” ("create/build"). In Russian that word literally means “create/build” (ex nihilo).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/созидать
“соз(и)дать” has a close etymological connection to an archaic term “зид” (“wall”).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/зид
So, that may adequately explain the word choice for the Slavic translation - the association with ‘erecting a wall’. And that also explains the motivation for the Russian translators to update it to “чинить” - perhaps in deference to the Hebrew.
Presumably, the vorlage of the oldest Slavic translations was the Septuagint. So that leaves me confused as to how they got "create/build" from "κατέχω", in the first place.
Can anyone shed any light on this?