Good News Translation (“People of Israel”) and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch (“All you foreigners”) each attempt to identify the persons addressed. The persons the LORD is speaking to are surely not the Babylonians, and on the basis of verses 6-7, it is logical to assume that they are the people of God, as in Good News Translation.

Babylon … Chaldeans: See verse 1 and 21.4. The first part of the verse may be rendered, for example, “Run away from Babylon! Get away from that land.”

Be as he-goats before the flock is a way of telling the persons addressed to run ahead of everyone else, so that they can be the first ones to leave the country. This is the basis for the rendering of Good News Translation “Be the first to leave!”

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 .