Good News Translation has merged verses 1 and 2 in order to have a more natural sentence in English.

Thus says the LORD: See 2.2.

Go down to the house of the king of Judah: The movement is perhaps from the temple area on the eastern hill of Jerusalem to the palace, which was to the south of it and on lower ground. Most translations retain “Go down…,” though Good News Translation has merely “go….” Here the house of the king of Judah is the palace (Good News Translation); the expression is not referring to the royal family as in 21.11.

Who sit on the throne of David: See 17.25. The kings of Judah were descendants of David; hence Good News Translation has “the descendant of David” and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “who sits on the throne of his ancestor David.” Another good way to express this is “who rules as his ancestor David did.”

Servants are high officials of the king (see 21.7).

Good News Translation renders your people who enter these gates as “the people of Jerusalem.” Jeremiah’s words refer to the gates of the palace, but your people must be the people of the city.

In verse 2 the LORD’s words are addressed to three different groups: the king, the court officers, and the citizens. In some languages it is awkward to put them in a series, as in Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation, so translators can say something like:

• Listen to these words, King of Judah, you who are a descendant of King David. And this message also concerns your officers and your people who come and go through these [palace] gates.

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 .