O Jerusalem is more naturally just “Jerusalem” in some languages. In others it will be more natural to address the city like this: “You people of Jerusalem.”

Wickedness translates the same noun used in 1.16. Wash your heart from wickedness may not be natural. Good News Translation “wash the evil from your heart” is better for some, but where washing a heart would not be meaningful, translators can say “clean all the evil from your lives” or “make your hearts [or, lives] clean; remove all the evil.”

That you may be saved: If it is necessary to translate this as an active form, it may be rendered “that the LORD may save you.” Obviously this action contrasts with the death that is threatened in the previous verse, so some translations have here “that the LORD may rescue you.”

Evil thoughts lodge within you is expressed in Good News Translation as “go on thinking sinful thoughts.” The particular word translated evil is used only twice in Jeremiah, here and in verse 15. Elsewhere in the Old Testament the word is found in a wide variety of contexts, though here it probably means “sinful” (Good News Translation); both New Jerusalem Bible and New American Bible translate evil thoughts by the high-level English expression “pernicious thoughts.” Lodge within you in this verse refers not only to the intentions within a person, but possibly also to the intentions within the whole community of Jerusalem.

How long shall…? is a rhetorical question that does not expect an answer. It may be expressed as “How long will you be full of evil thoughts?” “How long will evil thinking fill you totally?” or “How long will all your thinking be evil?” The purpose of the question is rather to plead “You must not go on with thinking nothing but evil!”

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 .