A devouring fire: perhaps a simile would be better; for example, “like a fire that burns everything up,” or “like a fire destroying everything in its path” (Contemporary English Version). So the whole sentence may be expressed as “Because Yahweh your God will be like a fire that burns everything before it,” or “Because if Yahweh gets angry with you, he will be like a fire….” This is a vivid representation of Yahweh’s anger.

A jealous God: the adjective jealous in modern English speech always carries bad overtones and means “resentful about and envious of what belongs to someone else”; this meaning is not appropriate when applied to God. Rather the meaning should be “desiring to preserve what is rightly his.” Good News Translation expresses a jealous God as “he tolerates no rivals.” In some languages it will be necessary to make the meaning of “rivals” clear by saying, for example, “Yahweh will not tolerate your worshiping [or, loving] other gods.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .