Are there … any that can bring rain? is restructured as a statement in Good News Translation (“None of the idols of the nations can send rain”) and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch (“Among the gods of the other peoples there is none who can give rain”).

False gods: This is the same word translated “worthlessness” in 2.5.

Nations can be rendered here as “other [or, foreign] countries” or “other peoples.”

Bring rain translates a participle made from the same Hebrew root as the noun “rain” of 14.4.

Or can the heavens give showers? may also be expressed as a statement: “the sky by itself cannot make showers fall” (Good News Translation) and “heaven by itself cannot make rain” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). Showers is first used in 3.3.

The negative rhetorical question (Art thou not he…?) is restructured as a positive statement in New International Version: “No, it is you, O LORD our God.” Some commentators hold that Art thou not he…? should be tied to set our hope, not to the giving of rain and showers. Thus Revised English Bible has “Is it not in you, LORD our God, that we put our hope?” Stated positively, this could be “You are the one we hope in, LORD our God” (compare Good News Translation). Thus these things would not refer only to the rain, but to the drought and everything else in the chapter: “For you are the one who accomplishes all things.”

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 .