My grief is beyond healing (Good News Translation “My sorrow cannot be healed”) renders a very difficult Hebrew text. The meaning is in fact uncertain, though this represents the meaning followed by the majority of translations. Bassa in Liberia has “My sorrow never ends.”

My heart is sick within me is translated “I am sick at heart” by Good News Translation and Revised English Bible; New Jerusalem Bible has “my heart fails me.” Many languages use some part of the body other than the heart to describe great sadness, for example, the stomach or liver. Others have no such idiom, and say simply “I am terribly, terribly sad” or “I am so sad I am even ill.” Translators should use whatever is easily understood by their readers. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates the verse as a single sentence: “A burden lies on my heart and makes me sick.”

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 .