At the beginning of this new section, both Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch identify the speaker: “The LORD says.”

Since most scholars identify Babylonia as the LORD’s hammer, Good News Translation and others make this identification in the text.

The construction You are my hammer and weapon of war is misleading in that it suggests to the English reader two distinct objects. However, they are one and the same, and this identification must be clear for the reader, especially since hammers are generally not regarded as weapons of war by people today. For this reason, Good News Translation renders “you are my hammer, my weapon of war.” In order to make it evident that a weapon is being spoken of, Moffatt and New English Bible render “battle-axe,” while New Jerusalem Bible translates “mace.” Since both these terms have other different meanings and uses in modern English, they are not very satisfactory renderings here. However, many cultures will be able to use a term such as “battle-ax” with no problem. Another way to render it is “war-club” (New International Version), or translators can sometimes refer to a weapon from their culture which would be used to club people with.

Good News Translation collapses break … in pieces and destroy into one expression, but if translators can retain the two-line parallelism naturally, that is even better.

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 .