Hear now the prayer of the dead of Israel: This statement (which is the clear sense of the Greek text) is one of the great problems of the book, since what it seems to say is that the dead are praying, and this is in complete contradiction to what was just said in Bar 2.17, that the dead do not pray. The only possible way to understand the phrase the dead of Israel is that the people of Israel considered themselves as all but dead; compare Good News Translation “We are no better off than the dead” or Contemporary English Version “We are almost dead.” A textual problem has long been suspected here, however, or rather a problem created when Baruch was translated into Greek. The Hebrew word for “dead” is spelled exactly like (but pronounced differently from) a word meaning “men.” This word for “men” is not used frequently, but in two occurrences (Gen 34.30 and Deut 26.5), it is used in the sense of a small number of men. The translator may have been misled into rendering the word for “dead” because of the reference to death in the previous verse. (This same mistake occurs in several places in the Hebrew Bible.) Moore translates here “the men of Israel,” but New American Bible has been bolder, and it is convincing. For the whole clause New American Bible translates “hear the prayer of Israel’s few.” The writer has just bemoaned the fact that his people are becoming steadily fewer in number, and now he cries out to God to hear the cry of those few who are still alive. An alternative model for the whole verse (which is printed in separate lines not because a poetic form is suggested, but simply for convenience here) is:
• Lord Almighty, God of Israel, hear our prayer!
We are the few who are left out of Israel.
We are children of those who sinned against you, the Lord their God,
and we are suffering the consequences of that sin.
A footnote after “the few who are left out of Israel” would be in order, reading “Greek: the dead of Israel.”
The sons of those who sinned before thee: Here sons refers broadly to “children.” Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version express the idea in terms of ancestors rather than descendants, which is just as good. However, we need to ask in this situation whether the writer is thinking of their ancestors for generations past, or is focusing just on the previous generation who provoked God to carry out his threats against Israel. In English “children” points the reader to the previous generation without ruling out generations long ago. Compare the comments on Bar 2.33. Where a choice must be made, however, it is safer to refer to ancestors. A possible rendering, then, is “Our ancestors sinned against you” (Good News Translation) or “We are descended from people who sinned against you.”
Who did not heed the voice of the Lord their God: See the comments on Bar 1.15-18.
Calamities have clung to us may be translated “we are suffering the consequences of their sins,” “we are being punished for the sins of our ancestors” (Contemporary English Version), or even “You are punishing us for the sins of our ancestors.” See the comments on Bar 1.20.
Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.