She makes a sound like a serpent gliding away: Egypt is compared to a snake driven away from its home by woodcutters. Like the snake, the nation can do nothing more than hiss and run in fear. The Hebrew text is literally “her sound is like a snake going,” and it is the Septuagint that has “hissing” in place of “going.” However, on translational grounds it is possible to arrive at the rendering of Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation, if we assume that the sound a snake makes as it leaves in fear is a hissing sound. Hebrew Old Testament Text Project prefers “like a snake crawling away.” A possible translation, therefore, is “Egypt hisses like a snake crawling away.”

Her enemies march in force: This can be expressed as “her enemies are coming [or, attacking] in great numbers.”

And come against … fell trees may be rendered “Like men who are cutting down trees, they attack her with axes.”

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 .