For he has sent to us in Babylon: For marks the relation between verses 27 and 28: “You should do this [put him in stocks], because he has written us here in Babylonia….” Good News Translation has “He must be stopped because….” In many languages sent may require a direct object (Bible en français courant “a letter”). Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch renders “He presumed to write us here in Babylonia.”

Your exile will be long: Hebrew has “It will be long” (New Jerusalem Bible “It will be a long time”), but the reference is obviously to the exile, as Revised Standard Version and other translations indicate. Good News Translation has “that they would be prisoners there a long time.” This can also be expressed as “You will be in exile for a long time.”

Build houses … their produce: See verse 5.

The punctuation (double quotation marks, single quotation marks, double quotation marks) at the end of verse 28 in Revised Standard Version should be noticed. See the comments at 27.8.

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 .