Thy words were found means that Jeremiah was the finder: “I found your words.” Thy words were found, and I ate them may be expressed in a number of different ways: “When you spoke to me, I devoured every word” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch), “As soon as I found your word, I devoured it” (Traduction œcuménique de la Bible), and “Your word is my food whenever I receive it” (Luther 1984). Bassa in Liberia expresses this image with a comparison: “Whenever you spoke to me, just then I held on to your words like a person eating food.” Good News Translation does away entirely with the figure: “You spoke to me, and I listened to every word.” Some commentators suggest that and I ate them refers to Jeremiah speaking the words for the LORD: “When your words came to me they became my words [or, message]” or “… they became part of me.”

Thy words became to me a joy is a fairly literal rendering of the Hebrew. Most translations have something such as “Your words were what gave me great joy” or “I found great joy in your words.” The delight of my heart is similar, of course, giving some slight intensification to the previous line. For the two lines, translators may say “Your words gave me great happiness, and became the source of all my joy.” Good News Translation has “and so your words filled my heart with joy and happiness.”

I am called by thy name is more literally “your name is called upon me.” The meaning is best expressed by Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch as “I belong to you” (see 14.9).

LORD, God of hosts: See the comments at 2.19 and 5.14. Here it is used as a form of address. There are many languages where such a form would more naturally occur at the beginning of the address, not at the end; or at least it would come earlier in the sentence. Notice, for example, Good News Translation “I belong to you, LORD God Almighty, and so your words filled my heart with joy and happiness.” In other languages the address would be at the beginning of the verse.

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 .