Where Revised Standard Version has Men as the subject, Hebrew has the third plural suffix “they,” raising again the question to whom it refers. Since this is most unlikely to refer to the priests, most take it to refer to the enemy invader. Dogged our steps is an English idiom meaning to follow, pursue, track, as when a dog hunts an animal. Dogged translates a verb meaning to hunt or lie in wait for. New English Bible‘s translation of the first unit in Hebrew, “When we go out, we take to by-ways to avoid the public streets,” involves altering the verb for dogged to one that means “turn aside.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project supports Revised Standard Version, and this is recommended to translators. We may translate this half-line, for example, “The enemy watched every step we took,” “The enemy spied on us,” or “We were hunted down.”

So that we could not walk in our streets is literally “from going in our open places.” Streets is the same term used in 2.11. See there for comments. This half-line may be translated, for example, “and we could not go outside” or “so we could go nowhere.”

The word translated our end occurs twice in the last two lines of Revised Standard Version, first with the verb meaning drew near and then with the verb meaning had come. To avoid this repetition New English Bible omits the first reference: “Our days are all but finished, our end has come.” Good News Translation achieves much the same result by omitting the repetition and reproducing the sense: “Our days were over; the end had come.” In some languages the equivalent expression may be rendered, for example, “we were about to be captured,” “our lives had only a few days left,” or “we had only a few days left to live.”

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 .