But he left Joseph, the son of Zechariah, and Azariah, a leader of the people, with the rest of the forces, in Judea to guard it: The connector But is not necessary here. Translators may simply begin with “Judas put two leaders….” There is a textual problem and a grammatical problem with the phrase a leader of the people; it is best to regard the phrase as referring to both Joseph and Azariah (so Good News Bible), not simply to Azariah. Nothing else is known about Joseph and Azariah than what is said in this chapter; their story is taken up in verses 55-62. In our opinion Good News Bible‘s phrase “in charge of the people” is an unnecessary addition; the people refers to the army. The verse could be rendered as follows: “Judas put two leaders, Azariah and Joseph son of Zechariah, in charge of the rest of the army, and left them to defend Judea.” A better approach would be to combine this verse with the following one (see the model below on verse 19).

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.