Forget my name means “forget me” (Good News Translation) or “forget who I am” (Bible en français courant).

Good News Translation takes their dreams which they tell one another as a reference to the prophets telling their dreams to the people (“the dreams they tell”). However, the text more naturally suggests that the prophets are telling their dreams to one another: “They hope, by means of the dreams they keep telling each other, ….” So Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates “By their dreams, by which one tries to outdo the other, they have only one goal: to make my people forget me….”

Their fathers refers to “their ancestors” (Good News Translation). See 2.5.

For Baal see 2.8.

In the text this verse is a continuation of the rhetorical question of verse 26. Most translations, however, do as Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch have done, changing this to a statement:

• They think their dreams they tell each other about will make my people forget who I am just as their ancestors left me to worship Baal.

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 .