They shall fall down slain: They refers back to “young men” and “host” in verse 3. The phrase fall down slain means “be killed.” The text has them killed and then wounded, so Good News Translation restructures to say “They will be wounded and die in the streets of their cities.”

Chaldeans; that is, Babylonians (see verse 1 and 21.4). They will probably not need to be mentioned by name here in light of verses 1-2. However, this will depend upon the discourse structure of the language and how verses 1-2 are rendered. Good News Translation, which places all of verses 1-9 in a single paragraph, uses only a pronoun. However, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch begins a new paragraph with verse 4 and renders “Then Babylon will be saturated with the dead, the wounded will lie on all of their streets.” Bible en français courant places verses 3-5 together and translates verse 4 as “The wounded will lie all over the land of Babylon, the victims of battle will be scattered all over the streets.”

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 .