Lift up your eyes (so also 13.20) is a frequent Hebrew idiom meaning simply “Look up” (Good News Translation, Revised English Bible, New International Version). In many languages Lift up your eyes will naturally be combined with see and rendered “Look up” or “Look at.”
Bare heights is a favorite expression in Jeremiah (3.2, 21; 4.11; 7.29; 12.12; 14.6). As defined by the standard Hebrew dictionaries, bare heights has as its primary meaning those tracks that were worn bare by the traffic of caravans. Some translators have rendered it “bare hilltops.” New Jerusalem Bible has the same rendering as Revised Standard Version, but with a footnote: “here it indicates the ‘high places.’ ” Both Luther 1984 and New American Bible have “the heights”; Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch has “mountains”; Good News Translation has “hilltops.”
Where have you not been lain with? may be more naturally expressed as an active: “On which of the mountains around here have you not already lain with men?” Good News Translation “Is there any place where you have not acted like a prostitute?” and Luther 1984 “Look at the heights and see if there is any place where you have not surrendered yourself!” convey the same idea in different ways. Certainly translators should use some expression that means to have sexual intercourse. Instead of the rhetorical question, some have expressed the sentence as a statement: “Look up to the hilltops and look carefully. You won’t see any spot where you haven’t already had sex with someone.”
Waysides is literally “roads,” but the picture is that of a prostitute waiting “along the roadside” (Good News Translation) for someone to come along. Lovers is literally “them,” but for English readers the context requires us to identify the persons referred to by the pronoun. In Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch the difficulty is resolved in another way: “… lain with men? You sat and waited for them along the roadside….”
Like an Arab in the wilderness may require that a verb and object be supplied: “as an Arab waits for victims in the desert” (Good News Translation) or “as the Arabs lie in wait along the desert roads for their prey” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). The picture is that of a band of Arabs positioning themselves to attack a caravan on its journey through the desert region. In the same way Israel is described as going all out to snare its lovers. For some languages it may be more natural to change the order of clauses: “Just as a marauding band of Arabs…, so you….”
An Arab is a member of a particular ethnic group. For readers who are not familiar with this, “someone from the Arab nation [or, ethnic group]” might be better, or “a person from Arabia.” This might be seen as an ethnic slur, accusing all Arabs of being thieves. New International Version has “nomad in the desert,” which avoids that issue. Since here the word is only being used as a figure of speech, this is quite acceptable.
For wilderness see 2.2.
Polluted the land: See 3.1.
Vile harlotry is more literally “prostitution and evil.” Such a construction is quite frequent in Hebrew, in which one of the nouns joined by “and” actually modifies the other. Here “evil” is taken as a qualifier of “prostitution.” Both Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch have “your prostitution,” on the assumption that for English readers prostitution is evil by definition. But for some readers, “evil prostitution” will be better.
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 .