poetry in Jeremiah 9:18b

The Hebrew poetry in Jeremiah 9:18b is translated by the German Gute Nachricht Bibel (last rev. 2018) in poetic form:

»Ach, wir können es nicht fassen!
Schmach und Schande stürzte auf uns ein.
Alle unsere Häuser riss man ein.
Unser Land – wir mussten es verlassen!«

Literal translation:
“Oh, we can’t believe it!
Shame and dishonor fell upon us.
All of our houses were torn down.
Our country – we had to leave it!”

The rhyme scheme follows the pattern A-B-B-A.

Source: Zetzsche

Sere also poetry in Jeremiah 9:20.

inclusive vs. exclusive pronoun (Jeremiah 9:18)

Many languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns (“we”). (Click or tap here to see more details)

The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).

For this verse, the Jarai and the Adamawa Fulfulde translation both use the exclusive pronoun.

complete verse (Jeremiah 9:18)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 9:18:

  • Kupsabiny: “Then the people said,
    ‘Let them hurry right away
    to come and mourn for us,
    until tears flow from our eyes,
    streaming from the eyes like water.’” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “Let- them -come- -quickly to cry over my people until their tears will- extremely -overflow.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “Tell them to come quickly and start to wail,
    with the result that tears will stream down from your(pl) eyes.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 9:18

Good News Translation indicates a shift in speakers at the beginning of this verse: “The people said.”

Raise a wailing over us is more naturally expressed in Good News Translation as “sing a funeral song for us.” The noun wailing was previously used in verse 10.

In the remainder of this verse, our eyes is parallel with our eyelids while run down with tears is parallel with gush with water. In some languages it may be more effective to substitute a single image, as in Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “that our eyes may overflow with tears.” Others, however, will retain the parallelism, as Good News Translation has.

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 .