Go not forth … on the road is best understood of advice given by one person in the city to another: “ ‘Don’t go into the field!’ one person shouts to another. ‘Stay away from the streets!’ ” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). A less dramatic expression of this is “People tell each other, ‘Don’t go out into the fields. Don’t go out on the roads.’ ”

The enemy has a sword is a typical Hebrew construction in which a single noun (sword) may be used in a collective sense. In most languages it would be more natural to say “our enemies have swords” or “our enemies are armed.”

It may be more effective if terror on every side is made into a separate sentence: “Terror is everywhere!” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). If terror cannot be used in an abstract sense, we may say “Enemies are coming to terrorize us from every side.”

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 .