For they had afflicted him: They refers to Jeremiah’s own people, the people of Judah. This could be clarified by rendering this line as “His own people treated him badly.” Good News Translation expresses the relationship between this line and the next one well by saying “Jeremiah had been treated badly, even though….”

Yet he had been consecrated in the womb as prophet may be translated “The Lord had chosen him as a prophet [or, a proclaimer of his message] before he was born.” Jeremiah believed that God had intended him to be a prophet from before he was even born; see Jer 1.5. For prophet see the comments on the first paragraph of the Prologue.

To pluck up and afflict and destroy, and likewise to build and to plant: This is quoted directly from Jer 1.10, so Good News Translation has placed it in quotations marks, inserting the words “but also” to separate two parts of the quotation. In Jeremiah the Hebrew text has six verbs, but here the Greek text has five verbs. It is hard to account for the six verbs that appear in Good News Translation. Pluck up refers to pulling a plant out of the ground by its roots. Afflict renders a Greek verb that simply means “to harm.” The verb destroy is the opposite of build, just as plant is the opposite of pluck up. Imagery from both construction and agriculture is used here. The prophet was told that he was to tear down and build up nations like a building. He was to uproot and plant them like a plant. An alternative model for these two lines is “ ‘to uproot people just like a farmer uproots plants and to pull down people just like a person destroys and tears down buildings, but also to build and plant just like a person puts up buildings and plants seeds.’ ”

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Sirach. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.