Verses 6-7 are tied closely together in that they summarize what the LORD did for his people: he rescued them from the land of Egypt, brought them safely through their desert wanderings, and gave them a rich and fertile land. All of this should have made Israel a grateful and faithful nation, but instead they defiled the land that the LORD had given them, and they turned after gods that could do them no good.
It is quite possible that the question Where is the LORD? represents a liturgical form used in the ancient Israelite worship. Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch change the question form of the Hebrew to a statement: “They did not care about me” (Good News Translation) and “They would no longer have anything to do with me” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). Certainly translators should avoid an expression that would lead readers to think the people should actually be asking where the LORD was. Rather, the force of the question is to indicate that the people did not turn to the LORD for deliverance. Thus one possibility is “They did not say, ‘We must turn to the LORD. He is the one who brought us up from the land of Egypt….’ ”
Who brought us up from the land of Egypt is more accurately stated by Luther 1984: “who led us out of the land of Egypt.” The meaning is that the LORD “rescued them from Egypt” (Good News Translation).
Led us in the wilderness here carries the positive meaning of “led us safely through the wilderness,” which is the basis for Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “showed them the way safely through the desert.” Wilderness is the same word used in verse 2; see the comment there.
Deserts translates a Hebrew word that refers primarily to a waterless region. In the present context it is used as a term that means the same as wilderness; elsewhere in Jeremiah, Revised Standard Version translates this noun as “desert” (5.6; 17.6; 50.12; 51.43), “Arabah” (39.4; 52.7), and “plains” (39.5; 52.8). Translators should try to find some word other than the term they used for “wilderness,” possibly “uninhabited spaces” or “barren wasteland.”
Pits (used elsewhere in 18.20, 22; see also Pro 22.14; 23.27) has the meaning of a pit dug for trapping animals. However, as used here the word refers to any treacherous hole or pit that a person might run across in a desert or semi-arid region. “Ravines” and “sinkholes” are possibilities.
A land of drought is a set phrase (see 51.43; Psa 63.1; 107.35; Isa 41.18; 53.2; Ezek 19.13; Hos 2.3; Joel 2.20). The Hebrew noun translated of drought refers to a waterless region, and has essentially the same meaning as deserts in the previous line.
Deep darkness translates a Hebrew noun that is also used in 13.16, where it is rendered “gloom.” The word itself is made up of two roots, “shadow” and “death,” which is the basis for Traduction œcuménique de la Bible and the alternative rendering in New International Version, “the shadow of death.” But translators should not use “shadow of death,” for regardless of which interpretation is followed, the context demands either a figurative sense (New English Bible “ill-omened,” Good News Translation “dangerous land,” or even “dangerous like in great darkness”) or a nonfigurative one with the abstract noun applied somehow to the land (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “dark ravines”). The Septuagint has “barren,” which scholars believe to be the translation of a Hebrew word similar in sound to the one used here.
In a land that none passes through, where no man dwells: New Revised Standard Version has “in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives.” It may give a better climax to change the order of these two lines, as with Good News Translation “where no one lives and no one will even travel” (similarly Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch).
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Jeremiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2003. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .