This house, which is called by my name: See the previous verse.

Den is literally “cave” (compare the use of the word in Gen 19.30). A cave would be a natural hiding place for robbers, providing both protection and shelter. Good News Translation has “hiding place” and Bright “hide-out.” Jeremiah is accusing the people of using the LORD’s temple in the same way that robbers might use a cave. After committing their crimes, they would run there for safety, then go from there to commit other crimes. In the Hebrew sentence structure a den of robbers is in the emphatic position.

The words in your eyes can be handled in various ways. New International Version has “Has this house … become a den of robbers to you?” Others have “Do you consider this house…?” See also Good News Translation.

The first sentence in this verse is a rhetorical question. Another way to express it without the question form is “You should not make my temple into a hiding place for robbers!”

For Behold see 1.6.

In the sentence I myself have seen it, the pronoun I is in the emphatic position, which accounts for the Revised Standard Version rendering I myself. New Jerusalem Bible (“I, at any rate, can see straight”) and Good News Translation (“I have seen what you are doing”) are representative of what is found in many modern translations. However, it is also possible to translate this whole verse in one of the following ways:

• Have you made my temple into a hiding place for robbers? Very well, that’s what I, the LORD, will regard it to be.

• You have made my temple into a hiding place for robbers. And so I, the LORD, will treat it like a hiding place for robbers.

For says the LORD, see 1.6.

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 .