Verses 12-14 contain several textual problems, and each will be dealt with briefly in its own context.
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? translates what appears to be literally “No (or, Not) to you all passing by the way.” The Revised Standard Version footnote says “Hebrew uncertain,” while Good News Translation provides one interpretation in its text and two more in the footnote. The traditional rendering found in Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, and others follows the last interpretation in the Good News Translation note. New Jerusalem Bible translates “May it never befall you,” which is the first of the Good News Translation variant interpretations. Bible en français courant changes the text to read “Come, all you who pass…” and gives in its footnote “Come: probable text; Hebrew ‘May this (the misfortune described in verse 11?) not happen to you (plural)!’ ”
The most convincing treatment of this expression comes from Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, which gives a “B” rating to the awkward Hebrew “no (not) to you” and recommends to translators “(It is) not your concern.” So in the Handbook we recommend taking as a statement essentially what is a question in Revised Standard Version: “It is nothing to you who pass by” or “You who pass by don’t care.”
You who pass by is an idiomatic expression for “anyone, an ordinary person.” A very similar expression in English is “the man in the street.” The same Hebrew expression is used in Psalm 80.12; 89.41; and Lamentations 2.15.
These people are invited to Look and see. What they are to observe is whether or not there is any sorrow like my sorrow. Some scholars prefer to translate this as a question; for example, New English Bible has “Is there any agony like mine…?” The answer to this question is clearly “No,” and so Good News Translation translates as a negative statement: “No one has ever had pain like mine.” In translation it may be necessary to modify any sorrow and my sorrow to say, for example, “Is there anyone who suffers as much as I suffer? Of course not.”
Which was brought upon me is expressed in Good News Translation‘s translation of the third unit. The sentence is in the passive in Hebrew, and it is followed by a statement in the active in which the LORD is the agent. It seems to emphasize that Jerusalem’s suffering is no chance happening but the LORD’s doing.
Which the LORD inflicted: this half-line is parallel to the previous one and serves to sharpen the focus on the LORD.
Revised Standard Version translates the final half-line as on the day of his fierce anger, and Good News Translation as “in the time of his anger.” In other words, there is here the first of several references in Lamentations to the “Day of the LORD,” the others being in verse 21 and in 2.1, 16, 21, 22. The “Day of the LORD” is usually an event which the Old Testament prophets expected to take place in the future, as in Amos 5.18-20. In Lamentations the day has already come. It is not a day when the LORD wins a victory over Israel’s enemies, as popular opinion expected it to be. It is, however, a day on which the LORD’s activity was directed against Israel and Israel’s sins. The poet saw in the enemies’ conquest of Jerusalem a proof of the LORD’s anger against his own people.
The translation of day of his fierce anger must sometimes be rendered in figurative language; for example, “the day when God shows the heat of his stomach,” “the time when God’s heart burns like fire,” or “the day when God’s eyes are very red.”
Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on Lamentations. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .