Go, my children, go: Jerusalem is not telling her children, the exiles, to go away and not bother her. She is saying just what Good News Translation says: “Go your own way … live your own life” (similarly Contemporary English Version). Both these expressions from Good News Translation translate the simple Go … go. Jerusalem is telling the exiles what Jeremiah told them in his letter at Jer 29.4-7. It agrees with the sentiments expressed in the cover letter to Baruch’s book (see Bar 1.11-12). The exiles must find a way to live a Jewish life without access to Jerusalem, the Holy City. New American Bible seems to miss the point with its rendering “Farewell … farewell.” Jerusalem will indeed see her children again.

For I have been left desolate: This could be translated in geographical terms as “I have been left as a desert.” The city has been depopulated, deprived of its inhabitants. The idea is not that Jerusalem has been forsaken or abandoned, which would carry the sense of a deliberate action on the part of the exiles. Her loneliness is involuntary. Good News Translation “I am all alone” is good, though perhaps another adjective could fill in some of the thoughts suggested by desolate, for example, “I am empty and alone.”

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.