Thus says the LORD: See the comment at 2.2.

This verse contains the words of the LORD about the people, yet the LORD is referred to in third person in the text. Good News Translation uses first person “I/me,” which makes the passage easier to follow.

Good News Translation interprets wander in the sense of “run away from me” (that is, the LORD), while Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates They … their feet as “They run from one place to another, as it suits them; that is their nature.” Translators could also express these two lines as “They have loved straying away so much, going wherever they wanted.” Thus in these lines probably is best understood to mean that they love wandering “very much.” However, in many translations it is dropped.

Accept translates a verb that more literally means “be pleased with” (compare Good News Translation). Revised English Bible translates “has no more pleasure in them.” Elsewhere in the book of Jeremiah this verb is found only in verse 12 of this chapter.

Although most translators render remember literally, here the word also has the sense of taking action, so that some have expressed this line as “Now I will do something about their sins.”

Iniquity is repeated from verse 7. Their iniquity … their sins is rendered by Good News Translation as “the wrongs they have done … their sins.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch uses a single expression: “I will no longer overlook their sins, but I will now call them to account.”

For punish see 5.9.

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 .