Their faces are wiped …: Obviously “someone has to wipe it off for them” (Good News Translation). Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version are missing the idea that the dust settles thickly, an idea that is definitely present. The sense of the sentence is “When a heavy coat of dust from the temple settles on their faces, people have to wipe it off.” A ceremony of washing the mouth of the statue is known to have been an important feature of Babylonian ritual.

Translators who are following along in New American Bible must take a friendly warning here. New American Bible is a highly competent and reliable translation, but in the passage from verse 9 through verse 13 (numbered in New American Bible as Bar 6.8-12) New American Bible is full of pronouns, but it is often difficult to know exactly which person or thing they refer to. Translators must be very careful indeed that they and their readers understand what these pronouns refer to.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.