Disaster is the same noun rendered “destruction” in 4.6. Disaster follows hard on disaster (Good News Translation “One disaster follows another”) is more literally “Disaster meets disaster.” The intent of the statement is to indicate a continuing chain of disasters, which follow swiftly one after the other. In languages where it is not possible for a word like disaster to be the subject of a word like follows, translators can say something like “One terrible thing after another happens!”

The whole land refers to the land of Israel.

Is laid waste translates the same verb rendered “are ruined” in verse 13. It also appears as “are destroyed” in the next line of this verse. Translators can say either “the whole land is destroyed” or “everything in the land is destroyed.”

My curtains may be used either as a parallel to tents (New American Bible “my shelters”; New Jerusalem Bible “all that sheltered me”) or as curtains on the inside of the tent (Good News Translation “their curtains”) or as a type of cover or awning which went over the tent itself (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “tent awnings”; “their coverings”). Another interpretation is that the tents and curtains here stand for the Temple, and that the people are lamenting its destruction. Following this interpretation, translators can say something like “Suddenly and in an instant our tent and its curtains are destroyed.” Following the interpretation of Good News Translation, however, translators could produce a rendering like “The tents that shelter us are suddenly destroyed; even the curtains are gone in an instant.”

In context the singular pronouns my … my are best understood in a collective sense of the whole people; note “our … our” (Moffatt) and “our tents” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch).

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 .