Which [cities] this [woman] built — our [Latin] text and the Hebrew count three cities: namely, two Beth-horons, and third, Ozen Sara; but out of this [last] the Greek makes two [sons] of the same woman, or rather sons of Beria: καὶ υἱοὶ Ὀζὰν Σαπρά. But since in the other texts this is not the name of sons, and the author of the Traditions, Lyranus, [and] Abulensis, and all, teach that it is a place built by her, I would think that from someone’s suspicion noted in the margin [the words] ἡ οἱ crept into the Greek — like the similar [thing] I noted in the preceding question. But it is deservedly wont to be asked how she could have built those cities, since, before the Israelites went up from Egypt into Chanaan, those cities already existed, as will be clear below (chapters 10 & 16). Some answer that those were indeed cities in Chanaan, but that Sara raised up two others of the same name; and Abulensis thinks this probable (1 Paralipomenon 7, question 8), because the Israelites built certain cities in Egypt (Exodus 1). But these [they built] not, surely, except pressed by hard servitude and altogether compelled…
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…[But these they built] not, surely, except pressed by hard servitude and altogether compelled. And why, in another kingdom — whence [Sara] hoped for a departure soon — would she make so great expenses in vain? Nor does anyone easily impose the same names on other cities, except on account of some memory or likeness of some thing. But what memory or likeness, in Egypt, of the Chananaean Beth-horon could be [an object of] concern to this woman? Nor indeed did anyone reckon any Beth-horon in the same Egypt. The same Abulensis adds that perhaps Sara had been given in marriage to some Prince of the Chananaeans, and so, among them, had founded the cities which the Israelites afterward found. I would scarcely believe that such profane marriages, procured with a Gentile and Chananaean, [were made] either by Ephraim or by Sara herself. For although the laws which would forbid this had not yet been enacted (Exodus 34; Deuteronomy 7) — and Judah himself married a Chananaean woman (Genesis 38) — nevertheless there was one circumstance while they were still dwelling in Chanaan, before they went down into Egypt, and another while in Egypt (whence, before the years predetermined by God, Genesis 15, nothing of the Israelite seed seems to have so gone out that it did not return into Egypt, as Moses did, Exodus 5). And while Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still in Chanaan, they nevertheless made clear enough, openly, that such marriages were little approved by them (Genesis 24, 28, 34).
It is therefore more like [the truth], what the same Abulensis at last subjoins: that the word “to build” is taken not properly, but for “repair” or “rebuilding.” For [she] rebuilt those cities, which had been laid waste either by [the passage of] years or by wars. And this can be confirmed from chapter 11, verses 12 & 13 below, and from the customary use of this word elsewhere. For Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh are said to have “built” many [things] out of cities and places which had already existed before (Numbers 32); and of these same, Solomon is written to have “built” one of the Beth-horons (3 Kings [1 Kings] 9, verse 17), because he renewed it, and fortified [it] with walls and adorned [it]. In the same way, the city Patara — which Patarus had once built — Ptolemy Philadelphus [re]built, and called [it] Arsinoe (in Strabo, book 14); and others [rebuilt] other cities, as I taught [on] Judith 1, question 7. Perhaps [Sara] constructed the third city, to which she gave her own name Saraa, by the same reasoning; or, if she raised up an entirely new [one], the word “build” here will be taken not improperly, but commonly and most broadly, so as to embrace at once the proper and the less-proper signification.