From the least to the greatest (see also 8.10; 16.6; 31.34; 42.1) is a Hebrew way of including people of all social levels. Similarly from prophet to priest is inclusive, without suggesting different levels of status within the religious order.

Greedy for unjust gain (New Jerusalem Bible “are all greedy for gain”) translates another Hebrew idiom, consisting of a verb plus noun of the same stem. Both are originally technical terms from weaving, referring to the cutting off of woven material. In 51.13 the noun is used in its original sense, though here, and elsewhere (8.10; 22.17), it is used with the extended meaning of “[illegal] profit.” In English it is possible to retain to some degree the original idiom with “each is taking his cut,” but obviously this will not be possible in most other languages.

Deals falsely represents “do a lie” in the Hebrew. Thus the focus is not so much on how people behave (as with Revised Standard Version) as on what they do. The expression is translated “practise fraud” by New Jerusalem Bible and “cheat the people” by Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch. The expression is used once again in 8.10.

As with much parallelism in the Bible, there is a progression from the first two lines to the last two, and it is possible to retain this: “For every one of them is on the take [or, is out to gain money dishonestly], from the lowest to the highest of them; even the prophets and priests practice deceit.”

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 .