The reason why the women must teach their daughters and neighbors to sing funeral songs (verse 20) is now given. It is because death has come. The text marks this relationship with For. Whether this kind of transition is natural or not will vary in different languages.

Death is pictured as an evil person or force which has made its way into the homes and palaces (New International Version “fortresses”) of the nation. In cultures that do not have windows, translators can have “houses.” Palaces translates the same word used in 6.5. An ancient Canaanite text tells that Baal did not wish to have a window in his palace because of the fear that the god Death might enter and destroy him.

If death is cutting off the children, it means they are dying. Translators can say “Death is taking the children from the streets.”

Children and young men translate the same words used in 6.11.

Streets and squares are first used in 5.1; for squares see also 48.38; 49.26; 50.30.

In many languages it is no problem to speak of death as if it were a person, as here. But in some, translators will need to use a comparison, as in “Like an enemy, death has now come in…” or “Just as an intruder enters our homes and palaces [or, fortresses] through a window, so death enters and there is now much dying here. The children in the streets and the young men [or, young people] in the marketplaces have died.”

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 .