This verse also contains a great deal of repetition, and most translations would be somewhat shorter. See for example Good News Translation.
And they obeyed, all the princes and all the people who had entered into the covenant: Persons who hear this text will probably miss the comma after obeyed, and assume that all the princes and all the people is the object of the verb obeyed. Translators need to take care in translating constructions such as this; that is, it is all the princes and all the people who did the obeying. For some translators the word obeyed may be a problem here, since no one has actually given an order. The text speaks only of the covenant or agreement. Translators can say something such as “… did what they had agreed to do.” As elsewhere in Jeremiah, the term princes does not necessarily refer to royalty, but rather leadership among the people, so Good News Translation has “their leaders.” See 1.18.
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 .
