complete verse (Jeremiah 51:9)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jeremiah 51:9:

  • Kupsabiny: “The foreigners who live there said,
    ‘We have tried to help Babylon,
    but we are no longer able.
    Let us leave this land of Babylon
    and return to our land.
    God is punishing that place in his power,
    and now it is completely destroyed.’ ’” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “The Israelinhon who live there said, ‘We (excl.) have-tried to cure Babilonia but she can- never -be-healed. Let- us -leave her alone and let- us -go-home to our respective place. For her sins has- now -reached heaven; therefore the LORD will- now -punish her.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • English: “We foreigners would have tried to heal them,
    but now they cannot be healed.
    So we will not try to help them; we will abandon them,
    and return to our own lands,
    because it is as though the punishment they are receiving is so great that it reaches up to the clouds in sky,
    so great that no one can measure it.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Jeremiah 51:9

We would have healed: We is identified by Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch as “all foreigners” and by Good News Translation as “Foreigners living there.” Included among these “foreigners” may have been Jewish exiles (verse 10), though some scholars feel this expresses the sentiment only of those nations who were intoxicated by Babylon’s splendor and who enjoyed the pleasures of its good fortune. Healed can be translated literally, but it can also be rendered as “help” (Good News Translation). The intensive form of the Hebrew verb is taken by most versions as expressing what the speakers wished or “tried” (Revised English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible) to do, but were not able to do, as the next line states. New Living Translation is a clear expression of this in English: “We would have helped her if we could.”

She was not healed; that is, “she couldn’t be helped.”

Forsake is used here in the literal sense of “abandon” or “leave behind.”

For her judgment has reached up to heaven and has been lifted up even to the skies will be unclear for most readers. As the note in Traduction œcuménique de la Bible indicates, there are two possible interpretations:
(1) The noise of Babylonia’s fall is so great that it fills the universe;
(2) Babylonia’s judgment is brought about by the LORD, who lives in heaven.

Bible en français courant accepts the first of these two interpretations: “The judgment that befalls her is the most colossal in all of the universe.” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, on the other hand, accepts the second alternative: “This punishment was brought on her by the one who lives in heaven!” Good News Translation also accepts this interpretation: “God has punished Babylonia with all his might and has destroyed it completely.” Either of these interpretations is acceptable, but many translators follow the first with a sentence such as “Her punishment is so great the news about it fills the earth; even heaven has heard the sound [of her destruction].”

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 .