So King Zedekiah gave orders: In some languages it may be necessary to indicate who Zedekiah gave orders to; for example, “So Zedekiah ordered his men to lock Jeremiah up.”

The court of the guard would have been the palace courtyard (see 32.2). Prisoners would have been placed here who did not require strict supervision.

A loaf of bread was given him daily: Considering the siege situation of Jerusalem, Jeremiah was not given less to eat than most other inhabitants of Jerusalem would have had. The loaf itself was in the shape of a flat round cake, about an inch thick and nine inches across. This passive construction may need to be restructured with some agent, as in “They gave him a loaf of bread each day” or “His men gave him….”

From the bakers’ street: Translators need to take care that they do not give the impression that the bread may have been picked up off the street, as though it had been discarded or thrown away. In all probability persons of the same trade had their shops on the same street, so that a street might be known by the name of that trade or the product. The Good News Translation rendering “from the bakeries” is a good model for some languages.

Until all the bread of the city was gone is at the time of the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians (see 38.28).

So Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard: This statement is the narrative conclusion for the episode. Good News Translation has restructured, combining this with clauses earlier in the verse to give a longer narrative conclusion: “I stayed there, and each day….” It is also possible to conclude with something such as Bible en français courant “And so it was that Jeremiah stayed in the palace courtyard.”

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 .