In the present context your lovers refers to Israel’s allies (see 22.20), which is the way New International Version renders it.

Forgotten can also be “forgotten about.”

The verb translated care is more literally “seek” (New American Bible) or “look for” (Revised English Bible). These literal translations risk being misunderstood since the meaning is to look for in the sense of wanting to help or rescue someone. Traduction œcuménique de la Bible has “worry themselves over you.”

I have dealt you the blow of an enemy is better restructured by New Jerusalem Bible as “I have struck you as an enemy strikes” (similarly Revised English Bible). Good News Translation makes a further shift to “I have attacked you like an enemy.”

The punishment of a merciless foe: Merciless is found also in 6.23 and 50.42, where Revised Standard Version has “cruel.” The meaning of the line is “I have attacked you as foe would, without mercy.”

The term guilt is first used in 2.22. Guilt is great may need to be expressed as “guilty of many things.” Good News Translation has “wickedness is great,” and places it after the next line in the Revised Standard Version text.

Sins is first found in 5.25.

Are flagrant translates a verb rendered “are great” by Revised Standard Version in 5.6. This verb, which has as its root meaning “be mighty” or “numerous,” is also used in verse 15 and in 15.8 (Revised Standard Version “made … more in number”). In 50.17 the intensive form of the verb is used in the sense of “gnaw [somebody’s] bone.” Here translators can either say “are many” or something such as “are so great.”

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 .