In verse 20 the first two half-lines are parallel in meaning. The second pair are related logically, and the final pair are again parallel in meaning.
Behold, O LORD, for I am in distress: Behold translates the Hebrew for “see” and is a plea for God to look, as Good News Translation translates. Distress translates a different word than the one used in verse 3, but the sense is the same: “agony, anguish, suffering, trouble.” In some languages distress is expressed idiomatically; for example, “trouble has seized me” or “bad has fallen on me.”
My soul is in tumult translates the Hebrew, which is literally “my intestines ferment.” A literal translation of the Hebrew into English would only suggest an upset bowel. This is a clear case in which the second half-line in Hebrew says in figurative language what the first half-line says literally. The literary effect is to increase the vividness of the unit. Translators may be able to follow the Hebrew pattern and employ a vivid metaphor in the second half-line. If not, the translator should not sacrifice meaning in an attempt to imitate the Hebrew.
My heart is wrung within me is literally “My heart is turned over within me.” A similar expression is found in Hosea 11.8. The sense is that the speaker experiences troubling sadness, or as Good News Translation says, “My heart is broken.”
Because I have been very rebellious gives the reason for the condition in the previous half-line. Rebellious translates the same root used in verse 18. See there for comments. In some languages the reason may have to be placed before the consequence; for example, “I have rebelled against God, and therefore my heart does not rest well within me.”
In the street the sword bereaves: In the street is literally “outdoors” as contrasted with “indoors.” The places are expressed as singular, but the sense is collective, that is, “everywhere outside,” and “inside the houses.” Bereaves translates a word in Hebrew that gives the sense that the sword takes someone away from loved ones by killing that person. Many translations take the loss to refer to the death of children. If the symbol of the sword is used in translation, we may sometimes say, for example, “Outside the enemy kills my children with the sword.” If the translator feels it is better to be general, as in Good News Translation “murder,” it may be possible to say, for example, “In the streets of Jerusalem the enemy is killing people” or “The enemy slaughters people out in the streets.” Translators should probably use a term for “killing” which is used for the killing of human beings during war.
In the house it is like death: in the house gives a particular location, whereas the contrasting “outside” can be almost anywhere. Like death suggests that indoors there is not really the experience of death, but only something like it. Various comments have been made by interpreters regarding this expression. AB alters the text to mean “inside, it was famine,” and so implies a similar situation to the one described in the first part of Jeremiah 14.18. Some scholars point out that in Hebrew a preposition is sometimes left out if it is preceded by the word meaning “like.” The word translated death can sometimes mean “the world of the dead,” namely “Sheol,” as in Psalm 6.5. Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, for example, treats the expression as a person by saying “Inside it is like in the house of Death.” New Jerusalem Bible, Moffatt (Moffatt), and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch interpret the expression to refer to the plague.
In translation it will often be necessary to reword like death as something which is more precise. Good News Translation “there is death” may have to be rendered, for example, “people are dying.” If it is necessary to give a reason for the dying in the houses, it may be possible to say “because they have no food to eat” or “because disease (or, the plague) has struck them down.”
Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on Lamentations. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .