The verse begins with the transition Therefore. Jeremiah says that despite the fact that he did good for them, they are plotting against him, and therefore he now asks the LORD to punish them.

Deliver up their children to famine is expressed clearly by Good News Translation: “let their children starve to death.”

Give them over to the power of the sword: Give … over translates a verb that means “pour out” (Bright “Spill them out”; Moffatt “throw them”). One scholar sees here the picture of vegetables dumped out on a table to be chopped up by the cook. But attempting to retain this imagery in translation would surely be saying more than the text says. Simply “Let…” or “Cause…” will do. Sword is best taken as referring to war (see 5.12), so Good News Translation translates this line “let them be killed in war.”

Good News Translation expresses let their wives become childless and widowed as “Let the women lose their husbands and children.”

May their men meet death by pestilence: Pestilence translates a Hebrew word that more often means “death” (see 15.2). Meet death by pestilence is more literally “become the slaughtered of death/pestilence.” New English Bible has “let death carry off their men.”

Youths translates the same word rendered “young men” in 6.11. Elsewhere it appears in 9.21; 11.22; 15.8; 31.13; 48.15; 49.26; 50.30; 51.3, 22.

The last two lines wishing death on the men and youths can be tied to the previous line: “May death and warfare take away the men and youths, leaving the women without husbands or children.”

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 .