In Leviticus 13.45 a person with leprosy (or person with a dreaded skin disease) is instructed to cry out “Unclean, unclean!” This is to announce to others that an infected person is approaching, so that people will be warned to stay away, and no physical contact will be made. However, in verse 15 it is probably not the defiled prophets and priests who call out but rather those who are not defiled. (See the discussion in the next paragraph.) Two exclamations are used: the first, Away, has the sense of “depart, keep away, get away from me!” The second, Unclean, means ritually or ceremonially impure or defiled.
Men cried at them is literally “they cried to them,” raising again the question of to whom the pronouns refer. The larger context gives preference to understanding “they” to refer to the people, not the priests, and so Revised Standard Version has men and Good News Translation “people.” This is the position taken by nearly all modern translations.
Touch not is a command for the defiled priests not to touch the people, or, as Good News Translation says, “Don’t touch me!”
So they became fugitives and wanderers: So translates a Hebrew particle which Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation understand as introducing a conclusion or consequence. They refers to the prophets and priests who have become defiled. The English words fugitives and wanderers recall the case of Cain in Genesis 4.12. However, in this verse the Hebrew word translated fugitive is very uncertain in meaning, but probably has a similar meaning to the one translated wanderer (literally “they have wandered”). So we may translate, for example, “So they fled (from Jerusalem) and drifted about.”
As in the first unit, where the verb is “they cried,” we next have in Hebrew “they said among the nations,” which is followed by a quote. There are two approaches to the understanding of the text at this point. Some join “they said” to So they became fugitives and wanderers. In this case the quotation in the final line of Revised Standard Version is spoken by the same persons. For example AB has “ ‘For they have gone away and must wander,’ they say. ‘They shall no longer abide among the nations.’ ”
Others, like Revised Standard Version, connect “they said” to among the nations. Revised Standard Version translates “they said” as men said, referring to the people in those nations, which is then followed by what those men said: “They (the fugitives and wanderers) shall stay with us no longer.” New International Version with different wording follows Revised Standard Version: “When they flee and wander about, people among the nations say, ‘They can stay here no longer.’ ” Good News Translation, which avoids using a quotation, says “So they wandered from nation to nation, welcomed by no one.”
The Handbook recommends either Revised Standard Version or Good News Translation in their handling of this verse. However, translators should make every effort to avoid confusion in the use of pronouns. For example, it may be necessary in some languages to say “As a result the prophets and priests who were defiled ran away and wandered from country to country, and the people there said, ‘You defiled ones cannot stay here any longer!’ ” or “… ‘Get out of our country!’ ”
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 .