Your mother is a reference either to the nation of Babylonia or the capital city of Babylon. Good News Translation renders “your own great city,” and Bible en français courant has “your motherland.” It probably does not refer to an actual mother, so translators usually will translate to indicate this. One possibility is “your city which is like a mother to you.”

Shamed is a familiar concept in the book of Jeremiah (see 2.26 for the first occurrence of the verb). The most common translation is “humiliated.”

She who bore you is obviously parallel in meaning with your mother. Good News Translation does away with the imagery of the mother entirely. However, some versions have combined the two expressions and used one, such as “the city which nurtured you like the mother who bore you.”

Disgraced is used only here and in 15.9. The two verbs shamed and disgraced mean essentially the same.

The first two lines of this verse complete the sentence begun in verse 11. There are various ways to structure the passage, including the following:

• 11 You people of Babylonia, you have plundered my possession. You may rejoice and gloat over it. But even though you are now playing like a young cow at threshing time or neighing proudly like a male horse, 12 your motherland, the city that nourished you, is going to be humiliated and disgraced.

Lo: See 1.15.

She shall be the last of the nations: New International Version renders “She will be the least of the nations,” though New Jerusalem Bible is probably clearer with “she is the least of nations now.”

A wilderness dry and desert must be taken together to mean “a dry and waterless desert” (Good News Translation) or “a desert, dry and waste” (New American Bible). For wilderness and desert, see 2.6.

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 .