The constructions that begin with How in Revised Standard Version are strong affirmations. Translators can sometimes say “See how,” but in other cases they may use an expression such as “Look….”

The hammer of the whole earth: For the imagery of the hammer, see 23.29, and for its application to Babylonia, see 51.20-23. Both Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch and Good News Translation identify Babylonia as the hammer, though they each handle it differently: “Babylon, you are a hammer…” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch); “Babylonia hammered…” (Good News Translation). The figure is a true description of that nation, which had beaten other nations into subjection as though it was using a hammer on them. For the first two lines translators can say, for example, “Babylon was like a hammer that hit [or, hammered] the whole world. But now it has no power, for it is broken.”

Cut down: For many English readers this would make them think of what someone does to a tree; New Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, and Good News Translation prefer “shattered.” Traduction œcuménique de la Bible renders the first two lines as “How the hammer of the whole earth is broken in pieces, shattered!”

A horror: The term is first used in 2.15, where it is rendered “waste” by Good News Translation. Here the last two lines can be expressed as “Babylon has become something that horrifies all the nations.”

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 .