Your hand is literally “and in you” (Revised Standard Version footnote). Good News Translation translates the Hebrew “You will have to let loose in you” as “You will have to give up” with a footnote that the Hebrew is unclear. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch follows the same interpretation as Good News Translation, though without including a note. A slightly different way to express this is “You will lose possession” or “The land I gave to you to possess will be taken from you.” But the active sentence of Good News Translation, “You will have to give up,” is often clearer for readers.

Your heritage, as elsewhere (see 2.7), can be “your land” or, in combination with which I gave you, “your land I gave you to possess.”

A land which you do not know is rendered “a land you know nothing about” by Good News Translation and “an unknown foreign land” by Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch (see 15.14).

For in my anger a fire is kindled which shall burn for ever: See 15.14 for a discussion of this clause. In place of a fire is kindled (following several Hebrew manuscripts), the Masoretic Text has “you [plural] kindled a fire.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project prefers the second person masculine plural form, although elsewhere in this verse “you” is second masculine singular. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch has “Since you [singular] have kindled my wrath as a fire….”

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 .