Compare Isa 1.26; Jer 33.16; Ezek 48.35.
Translators may omit the connector For at the beginning of this verse.
Your name will for ever be called by God: This verse refers back to Bar 4.30, where God is the one who gave Jerusalem its name (see the comments there). Here she is to receive from God another name for ever. Contemporary English Version makes this clear with “he will give you this new name forever.”
Peace of righteousness and glory of godliness: God will manifest his claim to Jerusalem anew by establishing there Peace (that is, well-being; see the comments on Bar 3.13) through righteousness (that is, justice). Only by seeing that justice prevails will Jerusalem find peace. God will have his glory manifested there in the godliness of the people. This will be the “splendor” that God will show all over the world (verse 3). Godliness refers to a person’s devotion to God, to a sincerely religious attitude.
The five nouns here—name, Peace, righteousness, glory, godliness—are tightly compressed into a dense mass. Dealing with this structure can be approached in two ways. Translators can leave something of the compactness of the original text, if they think the effect is at least as important here as the meaning. Good News Translation has allowed for this in its footnote: “He will give you this name forever: ‘Peace from Righteousness and Glory from Godliness.’ ” If, however, translators want to convey the content of the nouns, they need to find some way to expand these lines. Good News Translation has done this in the text. What God says in Good News Translation (“Your security … devotion to me”) is a reasonable interpretation of what these titles would mean, and translators can confidently follow Good News Translation in it. We must beware, however, of a potential problem in the Good News Translation introduction to God’s words (“Forever he will say to you”). Its introduction sounds like God is going to be repeating the following words for all eternity. Perhaps “Forever” could be placed within God’s words as follows: “Your security comes forever from your righteousness….” Another approach may be to tie it in closely with the previous verse: “ God will show your splendor to every nation on earth. They will know you forever by what God has said to you, ‘Your security….’ ”
Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.