With verse 17 the tone of the poem changes. The poet now identifies himself with the people who have been the subject of the verbs, switching to the first person plural. He and his companions, who may have included the king himself, judging from verse 20, are living through the days immediately before and after the fall of Jerusalem. In this verse the sense of the two Hebrew lines or units of the verse is again closely parallel.

Some editions of Good News Translation reverse the order of the first line, as follows: “We looked until we could look no longer for help that never came.” Translators who consider using Good News Translation as a model should use whichever word order is most appropriate in the receptor language.

The first Hebrew word in verse 17 has variants whose meanings are not certain. One probably means “we still are,” and the other “they (feminine) still are.” Most translations take Our eyes as the subject and “still are” as meaning “continually, ever, still,” or some other expression of continuous activity. New English Bible says “We strain our eyes, looking.” Good News Translation has “we looked until we could look no longer.”

Watching vainly for help: help is literally “our help,” which in this case probably refers to help from the Egyptians, who might come and defend Jerusalem from the Babylonian invaders. This half-line may also be expressed “looking for someone to help us who never came” or “watching for help that never came.”

In our watching: the Revised Standard Version footnote shows that watching is uncertain in Hebrew. Good News Translation interprets it as a means of intensifying the verb itself, as does New English Bible “We have watched and watched.” The form of the word suggests that it is a noun, so the translation of New Jerusalem Bible and New International Version “from our towers” gives a possible meaning.

A nation which could not save: the Hebrew text does not state that the nation (Egypt) was powerless to help, only that it did not help. A better rendering is “for the arrival of a nation that did not come to save us” (Bible en français courant). This may have to be expressed in some languages as “… save us from our enemies” or “prevent our enemies from destroying us.”

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 .